Academic Commons Search Resultshttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog.rss?f%5Bsubject_facet%5D%5B%5D=Architecture&q=&rows=500&sort=record_creation_date+desc
Academic Commons Search Resultsen-usSavage Mind to Savage Machine: Techniques and Disciplines of Creativity, c. 1880-1985http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:181591
Nolan, Gingerhttp://dx.doi.org/10.7916/D89Z93P3Tue, 13 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000This dissertation explores how the imagined semiotic mode of the unconscious, illiterate "savage" was instrumental to twentieth-century technologies of production in two respects: firstly, in the context of a global division of labor, as a way to disqualify certain groups' intellectual products from the category of intellectual property; and, secondly, in disciplines of aesthetic production, as an imaginary model on which to base new technologies of design and communication. In my dissertation, Savage Mind to Savage Machine: Techniques and Disciplines of Creativity (1870-1985), I argue that class inequalities under capitalism have been linked to the ongoing formulation of two distinct--albeit tacit--categories of epistemic subjectivity: one whose creative intellectual processes are believed to constitute personal property, and one whose creative intellectual processes--because these are deemed rote or unconscious--are not regarded as the property of those who wield them. This epistemic apartheid exists despite the fact that the unconscious psyche or, as I call it, the "Savage Mind," was, at the same time, repeatedly invoked by modernist designers in their efforts to formulate creative technologies, ones that tended increasingly towards digital modes of production. The history I examine in the dissertation reveals how modernist design has implicitly constituted itself as the process through which unconscious, magical creativity becomes consciously systematized and reified as technological, scientific forms of production. The dissertation is structured around four disciplinary paradigms of design, which collectively span the late nineteenth to late twentieth centuries--industrial design, architecture, environmental design, and media arts--and asks how and why each of these sub-disciplines invoked "savage thought" to develop new methods of creativity. While it is well-known that Europe's avant-gardes often imitated the visual forms of so-called primitive societies, there is scant scholarship accounting for how the alleged thought processes of an "originary" intelligence--gleaned from the theories of anthropologists, psychologists, and other social scientists--were translated into modernist design methods. Designers in fact hoped to discover in "primitive" and magical thought specific intellectual mechanisms for linking designed things to larger contexts of signification, a search that dovetailed with early endeavors in the field of Artificial Intelligence to devise computational languages and environments. The Savage Mind thus lies at the heart of new media technologies, even while intellectual property in those technologies remains the purview of a scientific elite.Architecture, American studies, Comparative literatureArchitecture, Planning and Preservation, ArchitectureDissertationsWilliam Sumner Appleton and The Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities: Professionalism and Laborhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:177379
Morache, Williamhttp://dx.doi.org/10.7916/D8D798X0Wed, 17 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000This thesis project seeks to explore professionalization in the history of preservation through the work of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities and its founder, William Sumner Appleton. Appleton is credited with advancing preservation toward a professional system of organization and a more scientific method in the treatment of resources. While SPNEA’s efforts successfully documented, managed and preserved old New England houses, this system also created a division of labor between the preservation professional and the restoration laborer. Through SPNEA’s development of a professional approach to historic structures, Appleton separated labor from craft at a time when labor (and immigrant labor particularly) was a prominent issue in the Boston social and political landscape. Through case studies of several early restoration projects, this project will show how Appleton specifically alienated the product of restoration from the restoration work itself. In these restoration projects it is clear that Appleton did not seek to develop any system of preservation education or technical training. Through contract bidding, the utilization of multiple general contractors, and general lack of interest in the workmen involved in various house restoration projects, Appleton and SPNEA separated the tradespeople of restoration projects from the professional actions of preservation. Appleton’s deliberate decision to isolate preservation professionalism from restoration trade-work was a way to isolate his cause from social concerns surrounding labor. This is interesting in the context of the period. While organizations like the Society of Arts and Crafts, Boston valued the arts and crafts as a way to elevate the craftsman, SPNEA institutionalized a method of preserving houses through funding and management, while failing to contribute to the development preservation trade work. Considering the longstanding credit to SPNEA in the development of a professional approach to the field of preservation, this social isolationism and alienation of labor in the restoration process explains why the connection between the Arts & Crafts and preservation movements did not coalesce in the same way as in nineteenth-century Britain. This scientific, object-oriented approach also contributes to the persisting view of preservation as elitist and isolated from social issues.Architecture, Labor relationsHistoric PreservationMaster's thesesExtracting the Exhibited Interior: Historic Preservation and the American Period Roomhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:177369
Wilcke, Vincenthttp://dx.doi.org/10.7916/D88G8J6PWed, 17 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000This thesis examines the history of preservation advocacy in relation to the collecting of American interiors conducted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the early twentieth century. The American interiors these institutions collected were installed as period room displays where furniture, paintings, and small decorative objects were exhibited as unified compositions. Underwritten by the progressive idea that aesthetics and morality were connected, museum reformers saw the American period room as a way to combat Victorian excess while attempting to assimilate the thousands of eastern and southern European immigrants who had come to the United States in the 1880s to a defined set of American values. Museum period rooms, however, were critiqued by preservation groups, which were determined to keep historic buildings preserved insitu. Arguing that they were rescuing the nation’s great interiors from dilapidated obscurity, museums leaders insisted that the rooms they purchased were not valued locally. Museum period rooms did shift attention toward the architectural heritage of the United States but they did so by dismantling important buildings that were often in no impending danger of demolition. Fearing the loss of local landmarks, preservation advocacy groups formed in reaction to the consumption of architectural fragments. American period rooms generated a contentious discussion between museums and advocacy groups over the cultural management of architectural heritage. Separated from their original purpose, American period rooms are currently being reevaluated by curators and museum professionals who are working to make them relevant to modern audiences.Architecture, Museum studiesHistoric PreservationMaster's thesesIn God We Trust? Preserving Historic Church Interiorshttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:177328
Lanier, Leahhttp://dx.doi.org/10.7916/D8PR7TH4Wed, 17 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000Research reports from preservation professionals in North America, Europe and Australia suggest that providing current preservation tools with practical knowledge of traditions and beliefs associated with historic houses of worship can facilitate a more comprehensive understanding of, and preservation approaches for preserving the overall integrity of, such sites. Using redundant historic Christian churches as an example, the following study investigates this suggestion using a mixed methodology to evaluate the efficacy of multifamily residential adaptive-reuse conversions as a preservation approach. In order to create a conceptual model for this evaluation, this methodology combined a Comparative Religion and Religious Studies methods model with current historic preservation tools for assessing the significance and integrity of historic properties. The model was applied to a series of multi-family residential conversion case studies with the following goals: first, to interpret and identify the churches’ interior components, and second, to ascertain the strengths and weaknesses of the adaptive-reuse approach.ArchitectureHistoric PreservationMaster's thesesThe Historic American Buildings Survey and Interpretive Drawing: Using Digital Tools to Facilitate Comprehensive Heritage Documentationhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:177317
Bopp, Susan Mariehttp://dx.doi.org/10.7916/D8BG2MHWWed, 17 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000The Historic American Building Survey (HABS), a federal New Deal program largely unchanged since its inception in 1933, is the nation’s largest archive of historic architectural documentation. Surveys include three sections that describe a historical building and/ or site: written historical research, measured drawings, and black and white photography. Today, nearly 40,000 records exist in the Library of Congress, providing copyright free public access in both digital and hard copy format. This thesis focuses on the drawing portion of a HABS survey; specifically investigating the nature and usefulness of the types of drawings allowed by the current drawing guidelines and standards and how contemporary digital tools can facilitate drawing production and analysis. While the current HABS standards call for a strict method of researched and measured documentation, within that methodology exists a diverse range of drawing types that accurately express the desired information but are not all necessarily utilized in practice. In an attempt to rejoin contemporary practice of architectural drawing within the limits of the Drawing Guidelines for HABS, this thesis will investigate the Interpretive Drawing clause within the Guidelines and how these interpretive drawings can reunite a new generation of architects with the federal program for documenting historic structures. By analyzing HABS’s history and its sister programs, which include the Historic American Engineering Record and the Historic American Landscape Survey, analyzing drawing theory, and critiquing current practices in drawing (both in the HABS world and in contemporary architectural practice), this thesis will ultimately synthesize those analyses by putting to practice different techniques for producing interpretive drawings in the form of case studies.ArchitectureHistoric PreservationMaster's thesesAdapting the Architectural Avant-Garde: A design proposal for Paul Rudolph’s Orange County Government Centerhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:177334
Miller, Bethhttp://dx.doi.org/10.7916/D89G5K9MWed, 17 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000As culture and technology evolve, how will modern architecture fare? The thoughtful and deliberate adaptation of and addition to a work of modern architecture can be a means to salvage it from the grips of obsolescence by creating a radical new work. This thesis explores the history of obsolescence in architecture through the twentieth century and its entanglement with the avant-garde. It addresses the difficulty of adapting and adding to modern architecture of the recent past, which has yet to accrue age value or appreciation by the general public, and is still in the process of being understood within the field of architecture itself. It explores in particular the complexities of working with the architecture of Paul Rudolph that has waned in functionality and popularity, focusing on the controversial case of the Orange County Government Center, which has posed a great challenge to preservation efforts. While modern architecture continues and will continue to hold value and meaning for our society, myriad forces are working against its durability. As architecture becomes increasingly entwined with and dependent upon technologies, systems and materials that have shorter lifespans, buildings themselves are threatened with obsolescence. We must therefore carry modern architecture into the future, not as a relic but with renewed functionality and significance. As a result, an entirely new architecture can be created that is richer in meaning and succeeds in meeting the increasing complexity and accelerating flux of contemporary life. The avant-garde is inherently bound to obsolescence, championing innovation and progress while declaring all that preceded obsolete; the avant-garde leaves obsolescence in its wake. In this sense, it is the avant-garde that has become mainstream; the truly radical work of architecture eschews obsolescence, preserving works of architecture by declaring them infinitely adaptable.ArchitectureHistoric PreservationMaster's thesesWhat’s On the Surface Does Matter: The Conservation of Applied Surface Decoration of Historic Stained Glass Windowshttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:177325
Grieco, Alyssahttp://dx.doi.org/10.7916/D8Z60MKVWed, 17 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000A stained glass window is both an architectural building element and an individual work of art. Like architecture, a stained glass window is composed of a variety of materials, mainly glass, lead, and surface decoration, each of which has its own conservation issues. Surface decoration, which includes vitreous glass paint, silver stain, and enamels, is the component of a stained glass window that is sometimes underappreciated. While it may not pose a major threat to the physical stability of the window or the safety of the window’s environment, it is the decoration that defines the windows as works of art, with imagery that holds the window’s history, including a direct view into the traditions, ideals, and beliefs of the people of their time. The conservation of the surface decoration of stained glass windows has never been fully analyzed, and both glazing and conservation professionals are constantly seeking information regarding the history of the materials and techniques used in order to create or restore a stained glass window. With conservation, the methods and techniques used to maintain and conserve the decoration will vary depending on a number of circumstances, including the location of the window, the history and traditions of the people involved, and the tools available to the conservators. As with all conservation fields, there are also ethical considerations to address in order to be sure that the authenticity of each work is maintained. For this history, it is also important to note the past restoration techniques used on these types of decoration, as well as what is being used today. This includes successes and failures, both of which bring essential information to the conservator. Each window brings with it an entirely new history and set of decoration conservation problems so there are no universal solutions for this field. Stained glass is a fascinating field because it combines the worlds of art and architecture with a single object and the surface decoration plays an important role in this. By analyzing the history and techniques of these three surface decorations, it is possible to not only preserve an underappreciated element inherent to these historic stained glass windows, but also the overall aesthetic of true works of art that serve to enhance the buildings in which they reside.ArchitectureHistoric PreservationMaster's thesesTranslation of Maurizio Cecchetti, "For Sensitive Skin: On the Transformation of Architecture into Design"http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:175698
Baker, Steve J.http://dx.doi.org/10.7916/D8XS5SKCWed, 16 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000Translation of Maurizio Cecchetti, "For Sensitive Skin: On the Transformation of Architecture into Design"Architecturesjb2009ItalianArticlesHabitation and the Invention of a Nation, Singapore 1936-1979http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:176089
Seng, Eunice Mei Fenghttp://dx.doi.org/10.7916/D82F7KKFMon, 07 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000This dissertation examines the history of housing and domesticity in Singapore by proposing public housing as the prime mover in the formulation of a national identity. In so doing, it traces the network of relations and spatial practices in the decades that span the Second World War and the country's Independence (1959), reaching back to the 1930s and the implementation of the first block of low-cost public housing by the colonial Improvement Trust in 1936, to the inception of the Island Concept Plan and the consolidation of Singapore as a Garden City by the late 1970s. On the one hand, this dissertation attends to the architecture, planning, and propaganda of housing as instruments in the making of a public body that extends beyond the inhabitants of housing estates to the entire citizenry in post-colonial Singapore, particularly in those spaces designated for the public. On the other, it examines the aesthetic and technological extension and adaptation of the colonial apparatus, in which the intersection of architecture, planning, housing design, media and politics transformed the postwar landscapes of the city-state. This argument demonstrates, in particular, how the Modernist concern with social and urban planning, which entered British policy and propaganda and led to the incremental termination of the Empire, was employed by Singapore's incumbent government to construct housing as a national project. The circulation of technologies, methodologies, and mindsets within the Empire - between the Colony and the hinterland prior to 1959, and later between the postcolonial Nation-state and other territories (such as other Southeast Asian nations and Australia) - constitute a complex of power relations, knowledges, and institutions that were reproduced even after the demise of the British Empire, during the nation-building phase. This encompasses the policy relationships within the various national authorities and the industrial sector, such as the state sponsorship of research, development, production, maintenance, and support for the education and training of professionals (architects, planners, surveyors, and estate managers) and administrators, as well as the deployment of equipment and facilities within the national development policy. In conjunction with resettlement and town planning projects, educating the populace on the spaces and objects in the modern home, and the appropriate conduct of modern living, was also integral to the project of nationalism. This dissertation also considers how developments in the sphere of public housing provision realigned the social relations and collective identity of a largely immigrant population. The argument advanced here proposes that the advocacy of aesthetic and societal change within the various constituencies of the Modern Movement not only affected the gathering momentum for colonial devolution in between the wars but also underpinned the policies of the socialist government in early post-independent Singapore. Specifically, the Modernist critique of social hierarchy was adopted to replace the traditional, historical-based approach, which in Singapore's case was mainly the spatial segregation of races set in place by Raffles and the colonial planners in the nineteenth century - between the colonists and colonials, and between the Chinese, Malays, Indians, and other minorities. The Second World War had also exposed the limitations of British Imperial power already on the decline. In this respect, Modernism can be read as a disruption of those systems and networks, though they were in fact closely associated with British colonialism. This dissertation contains four main chapters, plus a prologue and an epilogue. The first two chapters attempt to map public housing built upon the tropes of crisis and public improvement for which the garden city became the ultimate national project of improvement. The third and fourth chapters examine the forms and spaces of housing in conjunction with the urban renewal program and how they in turn led to in a totally planned environment in which public spaces, public discourses, and identities are subsumed. The epilogue returns to the deployment of the garden city as instrumental to the domestication of the disparate voices and identities within the public by providing a specific aesthetic for urban habitation; as well, it reiterates the crucial role of the press in disseminating and sanctioning the project.Architecture, Urban planning, DesignArchitectureDissertationsRecreating the Past: Aachen and the Problem of the Architectural "Copy"http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:173814
Shaffer, Jenny H.http://dx.doi.org/10.7916/D8QJ7FDGMon, 12 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000This thesis explores the formal, historiographic and critical issues of similitude and the problem of historical memory through Charlemagne's chapel at Aachen and buildings associated with it. In my study, I seek to understand some of the levels on which reference to and appropriation of Aachen reflect the historical, political and cultural moment unique to each of five selected interpretations and how, in these examples, the perception of Aachen provided an image through which contemporary concerns ad meanings could be expressed. The issue, therefore, is not so much what Aachen was like, physically or even ideologically, at the time it was built, but how the chapel was perceived in later times, and, importantly, what the terms of that image were and how that image made the chapel a viable touchstone for later references - often ambiguously termed "copies." These buildings can be seen not simply as subordinate to Aachen, but as works that incorporate an image of Aachen for their own ends; through this incorporation, Aachen can be seen as actually subject to them for its own survival. My study raises the question of what it can mean to remember Aachen and the corollary issue of what it can mean to be like Aachen. My chosen examples underscore that while the chapel remained a potent image, the perception of Aachen as a work of the past as well as the criteria for likeness are changeable and tied to time and circumstance.Architecture, Art historyjhs2141Art History and ArchaeologyDissertationsReview of the 2013 MoMA exhibition: "Henri Labrouste: Structure Brought to Light"http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:168784
Riedel, Dagmar A.http://dx.doi.org/10.7916/D8SF2T5KFri, 17 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000The 2013 exhibition in New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) was part of a Franco-American project that accompanied the recent renovation of Henri Labrouste’s Bibliothèque national de France in Paris. Henri Labrouste (1801–1875) was one of the most important French Romantic architects, and among his most important public buidings are the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève and the Bibliothèque nationale at the site Richelieu in Paris.Architecture, European historydar2111Center for Iranian StudiesReviewsTwo for One: The Cutting Up Trend Apartment Modernization in 1930's Manhattanhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:168239
Ducat, Vivian S.http://dx.doi.org/10.7916/D8Q81B18Thu, 12 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000In the 1930's, with vacancies on the rise and no cash to build anew, many Manhattan landlords chose to revamp their residential housing stock to both make it seem more modern--no more dining rooms, maids rooms, and twisting and turning hallways--and at the same time, creating smaller units, which could rent for less and therefore increase the building's rent roll.Architecture, American historyvsd2001Real Estate DevelopmentMaster's thesesManhattan Parking Garages 1897 – 1930: Significance And Preservationhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:165000
Grossman, Hilaryhttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:21557Fri, 06 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000This thesis is a survey and study of the purpose built garages erected between 1897 and 1930 with a focus on upper Manhattan north of 50th Street. This study is bracketed between the years 1897, when the first commercial garage was opened in Manhattan and 1930 when new zoning regulations and an economic downturn ended the construction of purpose built garages in Manhattan. This thesis identifies and defines purpose-built garages as a distinct and significant architectural type and makes a case for their preservation by highlighting their historical development, architectural design, technical features, and cultural significance. In conclusion, this thesis puts forth a complete study of the early 1900s upper Manhattan purpose built garage building from its development to the present day.Cultural resources management, ArchitectureHistoric PreservationMaster's thesesHoly Blood, Holy Cross: Architecture and Devotion in the Parochial Complex of Rothenburg ob der Tauberhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:181528
Boivin, Katherine Morrishttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:21367Mon, 19 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000This dissertation explores the spatiality of the parochial complex in Rothenburg ob der Tauber and the dynamic interrelation of architecture, figural art, and devotional practice. Among the spaces of the parish church of St. Jakob, the neighboring charnel-house chapel of St. Michael, and the urban cemetery between unfolded an intricate thematic program whose leitmotif was a miracle-working blood relic. Scholars are beginning to reassess the role of architecture in structuring and creating meaning among the seemingly disparate elements of medieval multi-media church programs. This meaning was not only contained in individual artworks but was also expressed in the interrelation among different pieces. The parochial complex of Rothenburg ob der Tauber was bookended by two elevated chapels: the pilgrimage chapel of the west end of St. Jakob contained the altarpiece of the Holy Blood by Tilman Riemenschneider; the free-standing octagonal cemetery chapel of St. Michael housed a Riemenschneider altarpiece of the Holy Cross. Between these spaces stretched an intricate network of associations that promised the faithful resurrection and salvation. Chapter one considers the potential for patrons to convey meaning through the choice of recognizable architectural models. Chapter two studies the power of local campaigns and spatial compositions to stage pilgrimage and to promise divine protection to the faithful. Chapter three demonstrates the ability of architecture to draw simultaneously on local referents and on distant prototypes in order to communicate ideas. Finally, chapter four explores the interconnections among the spaces of an architectural complex and among the elements of its multi-media figural program.Art history, Architecture, Medieval historyArt History and ArchaeologyDissertationsPostwar Nostalgia and Japanese Style in the Historic Preservation and Development of Kishu An Forest of Literature in Taipei, Taiwanhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:163149
Starks, Charleshttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:21035Thu, 11 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000This thesis examines the citizens’ movement in Taipei, Taiwan, that arose in the first decade of the 21st century to preserve, restore and reuse the Kishu An, a commercial building constructed when Taiwan was a Japanese colony in the early 20th century. The preservation movement has culminated in the creation of a literary cultural center and teahouse, called the Kishu An Forest of Literature. The preservation of the site was shaped by a coalition of diverse interests, including students, neighbors who wanted to save the site’s large trees and open space and members of the literary community which had emerged in the neighborhood after World War II. I find that while the cultural center utilizes the site’s Japanese imagery to promote tourist visits by the general public interested in the contemporary "ha ri" or “Japanophilia” phenomenon, the preservation of Japanese style also has deeper connections to the legacy of Japanese architecture in Taiwan’s postwar past. In Taiwan, Japanese buildings are remembered as humble domestic residences and as sites of educated resistance to martial law, and the Taiwan independence movement has embraced the island’s Japanese heritage as a counterweight to Guomindang control and mainland Chinese influence. Japanese architectural objects such as the Kishu An bear these meanings and have become symbols of a shared past for a population whose political orientation and national identity remain unstable.Asian studies, ArchitectureEast Asian Regional Studies, East Asian Languages and CulturesMaster's thesesInterpreting Disability Through Architecture: Franklin D. Roosevelt's Hyde Park Estatehttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:174920
Mullens, Amanda S.http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:20719Thu, 13 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000At historic house museums, preservationists are responsible for continuously updating the site’s interpretation in order to offer visitors information that will enhance their enjoyment and understanding of the site. In the case of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Hyde Park estate, a site that has been open to the public for nearly seventy years, the interpretation has always centered around a broad history of the man who lived there; to date, very little attention has been paid to the architecture of the estate. As Roosevelt himself had a strong avocation for architecture and went so far as to use his interest in order to design wheelchair-­‐accessible structures for himself on the site, the lack of discussion regarding the estates buildings is a missed opportunity. This thesis will examine the current interpretational techniques used at the site, analyze the importance of architecture to Roosevelt’s private and public life, and offer ways in which FDR’s designs and disability can be best interpreted through the site’s buildings.Architecture, Public healthasm2188Historic PreservationMaster's thesesMission 66: Where Are We Now? The Preservation and Re-Use of Mission 66 Visitor Centershttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:162181
Kinsley, Rebecca A.http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:20697Wed, 12 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000Mission 66 was a National Park Service (NPS) program designed to revitalize the national parks and to accommodate an increase in visitors after World War II. The program introduced a new building typology, the visitor center. Over one hundred visitor centers were built for the NPS during Mission 66, all in a modern architectural style. This was a distinct departure from the more rustic designs of earlier decades. Since the time of their construction, these visitor centers have been a source of contention in the parks. The functionality, siting and Programming of Mission 66 visitor centers have been questioned in recent years. In addition, the very architectural style of the visitor centers has been challenged as inappropriate. In 2003, the NPS launched a major research initiative to evaluate the origins of the program and to create a basis for evaluation and stewardship of Mission 66 resources. The result was a study of Mission 66 visitor centers, a Mission 66 context study, and an investigation of National Register eligible resources. Since then, many Mission 66 visitor centers continue to be demolished or threatened. This thesis will evaluate the current state of Mission 66 visitor centers. What, if anything, has changed about their interpretation and significance since the initial study? Recognizing the continued increase in visitation, changing standards within the NPS, and visitor expectations as a whole, how can preservationists continue to evaluate the significance of these buildings, and what are appropriate uses for them today?Architecturerak2147Historic PreservationMaster's thesesDemolition by Neglect of New York City Individual and Historic District Landmarkshttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:162134
Swyers, Lisa Renzhttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:20675Tue, 11 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000When a building or district is designated by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, it provides a steep measure of protection and regulation for the building, assuring the building or district will move forward in time utilizing managed change to retain the special qualities and character that define it as a landmark. When a New York City Landmark or District suffers from demolition by neglect, it is an affront to the entire premise of what the designation represents. Although not widespread, the rupture a demolition by neglect building produces in a streetscape is jarring and cannot be ignored. In many instances, the harm caused by demolition by neglect extends beyond the loss of character. Physical deterioration and abandonment is often accompanied by squatting and associated problems with fire and a litany of illegal activities, imperiling not only the building in question, but the neighboring buildings as well. Yet, despite the seriousness of this condition both to urban heritage and the health, safety, and welfare of the city residents, there is an inadequacy of the Landmarks Preservation Commission or other city agencies to deal with demolition by neglect completely despite the regulatory mechanism provided by the landmark laws. My thesis will examine the conditions which precede demolition by neglect when it occurs among designated properties and within historic districts; assert that the Landmarks Preservation Commission has matured from an agency whose purpose was to identify historic resources to one which must now focus more on managing and protecting the resources it has previously singled out as illustrated through demolition by neglect; determine why the landmarks law and the Landmarks Preservation Commission has not been as effective in diminishing this problem through regulation and enforcement as one might hope; identify ways in which the efficacy of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission can be improved and identify tools that may be utilized in tandem with established Commission avenues to produce a more dexterous approach to a complex problem.Architecture, Cultural resources managementlrs107Historic PreservationMaster's thesesDeformation of North American Marbles in Response to Thermal Cyclinghttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:174908
Thompson, Charles W.http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:20679Tue, 11 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000Marble is one of the most popular building stones in the course of human history. For several centuries it has been used as a principle façade material because of many distinctive characteristics such as color, texture, and the ability to take a highly polished polish. In the past, marble blocks used in construction had to function as load bearing elements and were sized accordingly. However, as building technology improved with the rise of steel frame construction in the 19th century, reduced wall thicknesses became possible and façade materials no longer had the same structural responsibilities. During the mid-20th century thin panels of marble, ranging from 20-50 mm, appeared as exterior cladding on structures around the world. The permanent deformation of marble panels, commonly known as bowing, has been recognized as a serious problem worldwide. Over the past few decades numerous architects, engineers, and scientists have worked toward better understanding and preventing this phenomenon. In 2000 the EU commissioned a multi-dispensary project consortium working under the acronym TEAM (Testing and Assessment of Marble and Limestone) to create a report detailing the mechanisms behind thermal deformation and develop a better understanding of bowing potential for different marble types. For obvious reasons the report focused primarily on marbles originating from Europe. Today little published scientific analysis of the effects of repeated thermal cycles on North American marbles, more specifically Tuckahoe, Colorado, Vermont, and Georgia exists. Considering that the marbles being tested vary greatly in physical characteristics as well as mineralogical composition, the potential for thermal deformation and disintegration between them will likely be just as dissimilar. For this reason, there is an important and recognizable need for a study of this type to accurately and effectively develop preservation strategies. In this study, 30 sample disks approximately 50 mm in diameter and 10 mm in thickness were prepared from four previously mentioned marble types. Each sample base contained 10 disks treated with a heating cycle, 10 disks treated with a cooling cycle, and 10 untreated disks. The samples were exposed to 60 thermal cycles, 3 cycles a day for 20 days. The cooling cycle ranged from approximately -10° C to 28° C and the heating cycle from 30° C to 63° C. Upon completion of the thermal cycling, the samples were subjected to ultrasonic velocity and biaxial flexure strength tests. The results were compiled and conclusions were drawn as to why each marble preformed the way it did as well as whether or not the marble would be suitable for use as thin panel cladding.Architecture, Materials sciencecwt2113Historic PreservationMaster's thesesRegional Architecture as an Expression of State Identity: Early State Government Buildings in the Honolulu Civic Centerhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:174846
Broverman, Annahttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:20615Fri, 07 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000The decades after the war brought a great many changes to the state of Hawaii as clearly visible in the architecture of the Honolulu Civic Center. Of the different agencies represented, the Hawaii state buildings constructed after 1959 in the in the Civic Center are examples of significant changes in a more regional architecture customary in earlier Hawaiian governmental design. There was an effort to create an appropriate form of government architecture for the islands since the mid 1910s by adapting styles from other temperate areas, like southern California, to Hawaiiʼs unique climate. But with the inclusion of Hawaii into the Union in 1959, there was a concern among architects that these older and often Spanish Mission style government buildings lacked a true “Hawaiian” character muddling its image as a new state. In the construction of new state buildings post-statehood, there was a conscious effort to create a regional architecture appropriate for Hawaiiʼs climate and representative of its people. As a result, buildings blended indoor and outdoor environments, utilized sunshades, and were oriented to take advantage of trade winds while incorporating local materials and art. These buildings were deliberate in their designs and represent peopleʼs aspirations for Hawaii in the early years after statehood. As buildings in so many temperate zones, these buildings are becoming the victim of changes in perception and expectations. They are dismissed and under threat of insensitive alterations and in one case demolition. This thesis intends to set the stage for their regional significance, seeks to explain how their designs emerged, and why they are to be preserved as important testimony to the stateʼs history.Architecture, Urban planningaeb2207Historic PreservationMaster's thesesReusing Brick: Properties of Brick to Mortar Bond Strengthhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:161950
Park, Mary Soohttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:20614Fri, 07 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000Brick and mortar is one of the most common wall systems used in the past several thousand years. These two components have evolved over the centuries as h as our scientific understanding of their performance. As brick and mortar wall science develops industry professionals need to reevaluate the design criteria, means and methods of construction and the performance expectations for these advanced wall systems. Building with used bricks was last critically evaluated over 80 years ago and based on the findings at that time; the industry has generally avoided rebuilding with used bricks. However, much has changed since then and this thesis revisits the topic of reusing bricks. This thesis addresses the performance of brick to mortar bond strength when reusing the same brick. This study aims to clarify the role of brick cleaning methods on flexural bond strength and to provide information that will improve the performance of brick to mortar building construction. Based on the results obtained, the following conclusions were made 1. New bricks had the highest initial rate of absorption (IRA), followed by reclaimed bricks cleaned via Stage 1, Stage 2 and Stage 3 procedures. 2. The flexural bond strength of brick to mortar increases as brick is cleaned more forcefully. Washing bricks with acid proved to be the most effective in increasing bond strength. 3. Flexural bond strength decreases as the average IRA of bricks increases. 4. Flexural bond strength of reclaimed brick is higher than that of new brick. Flexural bond strengths increased after mortar was applied for the second time.Architecturemsp2144Historic PreservationMaster's thesesHousing Diplomacy: US Housing Aid to Latin America, 1949-1973http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:161899
Renner, Andreahttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:20595Thu, 06 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000During the Cold War, the State Department sent architects, engineers, and legislation specialists to almost every Latin American and Caribbean nation to develop housing along US lines. These International Housing efforts were part of larger development aid programs in the region and were implemented to secure alliances, suppress radicalism, and promote the American way of life abroad. The dissertation focuses on three case studies--in the Caribbean, Guatemala, and Peru--to examine the influence the United States had on Latin America's built environment and show how architecture has functioned as an important component of US foreign policy. The dissertation demonstrates how Cold War housing aid introduced new materials and construction techniques, encouraged homeownership by promoting mortgage financing, and helped supplant local, Latin American urban forms with US architectural types and city plans in order to create the image of a modernizing, capitalist, and western-oriented nation.Architecture, Urban planningasr2118Art History and ArchaeologyDissertationsDeconstructing James Brown Lord, A Monographhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:158479
Tobin, Richard Leonardhttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:19606Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000The genesis of this thesis began in 2006 with the renovation of what is now known as The Grand Gallery located within the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) campus and was predicated on the discovery of the floor plan for the structural analysis of the floor load for what was known at the time as the Foyer to the museum on West 79th Street circa 1902. On this drawing were taped the names of Charles Volz and James Brown Lord, no date nor title block are listed on the drawing. This was the second encounter after having previously worked on the renovation of James Brown Lord’s Yorkville Branch Library at 222 East Seventy-ninth Street in 1986 in conjunction with Gwathmey Siegel and Associates; ‘the first of the Carnegie Branch Libraries’ built in New York City in 1902 for the New York Public Library (NYPL), Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. Both sites were constructed posthumously to Lord, but were supervised and completed by Charles Volz, his ‘associate'.Architecture, Cultural resources managementrst2128Historic PreservationMaster's thesesBernini’s S. Andrea al Quirinale and Early Modern Architectural Representationhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:158547
Barry, Fabio http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:19535Fri, 29 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000My research project focuses on Gianlorenzo Bernini’s S. Andrea al Quirinale (1658-71), Rome, church of the Jesuit novitiate and largely underwritten by Prince Camillo Pamphili. This is not, however, a monographic study. S. Andrea is a vehicle for assessing fundamental and influential themes in early modern architectural representation as well as challenging several longstanding assumptions in current methodological approaches. The church is a milestone in any history of early modern architecture and a staple on most survey courses of western art. Over the last thirty years scholars have demonstrated that it was not built to an initial, unitary design but is instead the residue of protracted adaptation and revision (Connors, Frommel, Marder, Terhalle); elucidated the mechanisms of patronage; and explained its iconography (Cather, Careri, Levine). Yet, a full and coherent analysis of the intellectual priorities behind its formal choices, general and particular, is lacking. Indeed, as things stand, it is difficult to understand why Bernini himself considered S. Andrea his best work.Architecture, Art historyItalian AcademyAbstractsAmerican Decorative Stenciling: 1840 to 1940http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:157221
Marconi, Emmahttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:19197Thu, 28 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000This thesis analyzes American stenciling from 1840 to 1940 and explores how stenciling mirrored various shifts in society and architectural and decorative styles during that time period. During the Victorian Period, the industrialization of the United States and many of the related changes in American society played a pivotal role in the development of the professional decorator/painter and the use of stencils in decorating schemes. Additionally, this thesis provides an in depth analysis of the development of the painter into the painter/decorator thus creating a demand for the extensive use of stencils throughout the late 1800s. Understanding the significance of stenciled interiors will lead to a better interpretation of historic structures and increase the knowledge and appreciation of stenciling. Ultimately, however, as American society moved from the Victorian era to the Modern era, the preference for simplified and streamlined architectural styles along with a decline in decorators’ abilities resulted in the decreased use of stenciling as a decorative finish.Architecture, DesignHistoric PreservationMaster's thesesLost and Found, Grand Central, New York Cityhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:156045
Marcus, Sharonhttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:18906Fri, 01 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000I wanted to get lost in Grand Central Station. Not an easy task, given my inclination always to know where I'm going and when I'll get there. And a wish almost certain to be denied, given the spirit of the place I had chosen.Architecturesm2247English and Comparative LiteratureArticlesThe Informal as a Project: Self-Help Housing in Peru, 1954-1986http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:156051
Gyger, Helenhttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:18850Mon, 28 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000This dissertation examines the history of aided self-help housing through the case study of Peru, which was the site of significant experiments in this field, and pioneering in its efforts to enact a large-scale policy of land tenure regularization in unplanned settlements. As the sheer scale of the housing deficit tested the limits of conventional modernist housing reform, aided self-help presented itself as a response to the constraints and apparent opportunities of this situation; its essential premise was to bring together the benefits of "formal" architecture (an expertise in design and construction) with those of "informal" building (substantial cost savings, because residents themselves furnished the labour). The analysis focuses on three key spheres: the circumstances which made Peru a fertile site for innovation in low-cost housing under a succession of very different political regimes; the influences on, and movements within, architectural culture which prompted architects to consider aided self-help housing as an alternative mode of practice; and the context in which international development agencies came to embrace these projects as part of their larger goals during the Cold War and beyond. Aided self-help housing in Peru took a variety of forms, ranging from highly co-ordinated projects constructed using communal labour, with on-site technical assistance from architects, to sites-and-services developments, which included the provision of basic services (water, sewerage, electricity, roadways), on the expectation that residents would eventually consolidate their neighbourhoods into more-or-less conventional urban areas. These projects generally offered a very basic core house, which residents were expected to expand and complete over time following standard plans set out by an architect. Housing on this progressive-development model (also called the "growing house") could be built incrementally as the family's needs demanded and its budget allowed. At the other end of the spectrum was the UN-sponsored Proyecto Experimental de Vivienda (PREVI), an international design competition which endeavoured to draw upon the experience of prominent avant-garde architects to devise new approaches to low-cost housing; foregrounding innovations in building technologies, construction systems, and urban design theories, this experiment ultimately brought the latent conflicts between high architecture and affordable housing into high-relief. This research reveals that although aided self-help housing promised a means of resolving a housing crisis that conventional architectural techniques had failed to meet, it quickly encountered the seeds of its own failure--at the political level, the organizational level, the implementation level, and perhaps most crucially, the funding level. Despite the promises of technical assistance to self-builders, in practice the needed resources and trained staff often failed to appear, suggesting that the rhetoric of self-help could simply become a mask to validate the state's disengagement from housing provision. While this withdrawal of the state (and as a result, of the architects it employs) from the provision of low-cost housing has seemed inevitable, the dissertation aims to reexamine the effectiveness of these experiments in aided self-help, in order to open the way to reassessing their potential and reframing their strategies for contemporary practice.Architecture, Urban planning, Latin American studiesheg2103ArchitectureDissertationsPutting Colleges and Universities to the Test: Preserving Postwar Dormitories in Contemporary Contexthttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:154976
Klose, Olivia Taylorhttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:15399Wed, 12 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000The purpose of this thesis is to prove the importance of modern architecture to the evolution of the American college and university campus, and to suggest a course of action with respect to its increased protection through the presentation of case studies that will examine the architectural intention, building performance, public reception and preservation of three mid-century modernist dormitories. The primary case study presents the history and significance of Harvard Law School’s Graduate Center (Walter Gropius and TAC, 1950), and then shows how perceptions of the Graduate Center’s aesthetic and technical failure currently threaten its architectural integrity and future viability. The following section summarizes current discourse in the historic preservation field on the appropriate treatment of modern architecture, both philosophically and physically. The final case studies offer an analysis of recent preservation work done on two modernist dormitories. In the case of MIT’s Baker House, designed in 1949 by Alvar Aalto and renovated by Perry Dean Rogers from 1998 to 1999, MIT’s institutional agenda combined with a consideration for the building’s status as an international icon of modernism produced results both positive and negative for the vitality and integrity of the dormitory. In the case of Ferry Cooperative House at Vassar College, designed in 1951 by Marcel Breuer and renovated from 1999 to 2000 by Herb Beckhard Frank Richlan & Associates, aesthetic intervention was guided by the judgment of Herb Beckhard, former associate of Breuer, and results demonstrated the integral role of the modernist interior. The concluding section highlights important differences in the architecture and status of the three dormitories examined, and summarizes the challenges specific to preserving modernist dormitories.Architectureotk2103Historic PreservationMaster's theses3D modeling of historic sites using range and image datahttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:154422
Allen, Peter K.; Stamos, Ioannis; Troccoli, Alejandro; Smith, Benjamin; Leordeanu, Marius; Hsu, Y. C.http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:15187Mon, 05 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000Preserving cultural heritage and historic sites is an important problem. These sites are subject to erosion, vandalism, and as long-lived artifacts, they have gone through many phases of construction, damage and repair. It is important to keep an accurate record of these sites using 3-D model building technology as they currently are, so preservationists can track changes, foresee structural problems, and allow a wider audience to "virtually" see and tour these sites Due to the complexity of these sites, building 3-D models is time consuming and difficult, usually involving much manual effort. This paper discusses new methods that can reduce the time to build a model using automatic methods. Examples of these methods are shown in reconstructing a model of the Cathedral of Ste. Pierre in Beauvais, France.Computer science, Architecturepka1Computer ScienceArticlesBuilding a Continent: The Idea of Latin American Architecture in the Early Postwarhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:153195
Real, Patricio delhttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:14867Wed, 10 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000In January 1943, New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) opened Brazil Builds. This exhibition has been widely credited as initiating the international appraisal and celebration of Latin America's modern architecture. Responsive to the war context and to the museum's engagement with the Office of the Coordinator of Inter American Affairs directed by Nelson Rockefeller, this exhibition presented a clear overlap between politics and modern architecture culture in the Americas that aimed to create a unified and defensible Western Hemisphere. This is a story that, although consistently repeated and alluded to, has never been told because studies of Brazil Builds have emphasized a singular national frame. This dissertation studies the overall trajectory of MoMA's engagement with Latin American modern architecture and culture in the late 1930s and 1940s, and posits its endeavors as leading to the 1955 exhibition, Latin American Architecture since 1945. It argues that the promise of a better world made in 1943 with Brazil Builds was staged in 1955 as a threshold for the entire region and as demonstration of the advantages of a US-led postwar modernization. This work articulates the historical conditions that, in 1955, allowed the British Architectural Review to talk about a "Latin American manner" in architectural modernism. Architectural historians and critics outside the region noticed the contours of a Latin American modern style on the period roughly between 1939 and 1955 and deployed historiographic strategies to include the region's buildings within the history of Western architectural modernism. Rather than a study of an architectural style, this dissertation presents Latin American modernism as a historical concept born out of the tensions between similarity and difference with Western culture at the time of the hegemonic rise of the United States. The need for a regional construct named "Latin America" permeated postwar modernization before the unfolding of the bi-polar world of the Cold War. This work shows that the idea of Latin American architecture was subordinated to early postwar political and cultural anxieties in the United States and highlights MoMA as a key stage in the construction of this historical concept, beyond the specifics of any single exhibition. This study engages international modern architecture culture as refracted through the museum and the varied cast of characters and events supported by this cultural powerhouse to reveal overarching strategies that enabled the idea of Latin America. Guided by US postwar economic and political strategies, the multiple mirror images and distortions produced at MoMA made modernism in the Americas a contested ground challenged by regional Latin American powers and European cultural centers. This dissertation examines five exhibitions that involved the entire museum (Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art), the Department of Painting and Sculpture (Portinari of Brazil) and the Department of Architecture and Design (Brazil Builds, From Le Corbusier to Niemeyer: 1929-1949 and Latin American Architecture since 1945), as well as other related events that influenced architecture culture during this period. This work positions Latin American modern architecture within a Western postwar culture and delineates the forms of inclusion and exclusion--of what and who was modern--that created both physical spaces and mental maps of postwar modernity giving a transnational image of the Western World.Art history, Architecture, Latin American studiespd2164ArchitectureDissertationsCloud-Based Approach to Data Collection and Project Management for Architectural Conservationhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:164522
Caughey, Patrick Jameshttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:14637Mon, 10 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000A comprehensive digital inventory of architectural conservation project data does not yet exist; however, the accumulation and management of such data - and its virtual, intelligent analysis thereafter - is possible. The first and most essential step toward making it so must be taken by those interacting with the architectural heritage; it must be taken by all professionals who are responsible for the development and protection of new and historic built environments. This thesis will present a cloud-based approach to data collection and project management for architectural conservation that is designed to help working professionals take the first step, simultaneously laying the groundwork for the gradual process of collecting and managing project information for the purpose of establishing an international digital inventory of architectural heritage information. The ultimate goal of this thesis is to demonstrate how integrated analytical, cloud-based and crowd-sourced concepts derived from information technology within all levels of architectural conservation work can help us better understand the accumulated world in which we live, and ensure that accurate, consistent records and references to the heritage conservation work we do today are preserved and made widely accessible for future generations.Architecture, Information technologypjc2143Historic Preservation, Earth InstituteMaster's thesesPreserving North Carolina's Last Textile Landscape: The Case for Henry River Mill Villagehttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:152302
Carroll, Kelly Autumnhttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:14610Thu, 06 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000This paper investigates the history and architecture of the functionally obsolete and abandoned Henry River Mill Village and offers a preservation strategy for the site. This thesis contributes to the historical narrative of the textile industry and the landscapes that emerged from this industry in the state of North Carolina between 1880 and 1915. Based on research via primary and secondary sources, a site visit, interviews with historians, planners, non-profits and local and state leaders over a year-long period, it became apparent that traditional preservation strategies for Henry River were not appropriate and/or viable options. The preservation strategy offered is for the site to function as a cultural resource set in a public park, with the extant and ruinous architecture stabilized and interpreted, with the exception of the company store which should be rehabilitated and renovated. The site will function as a connector to the region and state's greenway and blueway corridors. To conclude, preservation in this form, as a "ghost town," represents the state's textile heritage in the purest form because its ruinous state does not conceal the post-industrial condition of the departed textile industry. Refurbished historic sites are not realistic representations of the condition of the recent past. Henry River Mill Village could serve as the first and only representation of an intact, post-industrial textile landscape in North Carolina.Architecturekc2641Historic PreservationMaster's theses"On Earth as It Is in Heaven?" The Creation of the Bastides of Southwest Francehttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:151975
Love, Melissa Jordanhttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:14500Thu, 23 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000In southwest France starting in the early thirteenth century, an estimated 500 to 700 new towns were created over the course of about 150 years. These new towns, or "bastides," were most often created on unoccupied lands and took the form of a geometric grid plan that was designed around a central market square ringed with arcades, or couverts. Created for economic trade and settlement purposes, the bastides represent one of the first forays into urban planning on a grid system since late Roman times, especially on such a large scale, and they coincide with new economic and political rights and grants of land laid out in the town charters to attract inhabitants to move to the new communities. Many of the bastides were founded by the kings of France and England, as well as local lords including Count Raymond VII of Toulouse, and were made in cooperation with local landowners who were often Cistercian monasteries or minor nobility. While many studies thus far have focused on the economic and political implications for these charters, which included sales and property taxes that replaced traditional tithing, other scholarship has focused on their geographic placement and their geometric planning. However, few have addressed larger issues of identity formation, the social production of space, visual relationships such as between the market hall and the church, or the impact of the Cathar heresy in the region on the relationship between bastides and ecclesiastic authorities. This dissertation addresses these issues of social context, town design, and architectural form. The Cathar heresy was initially put down by a crusade called by Innocent III and resulted in the wholesale destruction of many cities in southwest France. The bastides were created partly as a consequence of the devastation in order to fulfill the need for new settlements. Because of this history of heresy, many bastides were built on former Cathar lands and utilized a strong stamp of authority through naming practice and the development of over-large church clocher-porches that dominate the town squares. Other bastides reflect identity and ambition through the appropriation of European city names, most of them Spanish or Italian, many of which were developing new economic and political rights of their own that were allowing them to thrive. These included the Fueros de Valencia and the Liber Paradisus of Bologna, which targeted the merchant class at the expense of the nobility, and the latter did so through the rhetoric of biblical metaphor. Many of the names used by the bastides were Italian communes, which had a tradition of written odes that described the ideal city in language that included the visual description of compact, state homes on organized, broad streets. These reflect the wide straight streets of the bastides and not the narrow, overbuilt urban tangle that was more common in medieval cities. Though the underlying geometry of bastides is somewhat tenuous, the massive size of some of their squares stands as a marker of their founders' ambition. Metrological investigation shows that they were designed in proportion with the market halls, are often oriented with the cardinal directions, and appear to use mainly the Roman or royal foot length in whole numbers that could be subdivided into an even number of house lots. The churches of the bastides display more pronounced geometry and were also proportional to the town lots; however, they seem divided between those that aligned themselves with the new town grid and those that were built against the grid in order to maintain a strict east-west alignment or to maintain a direct sightline into the square. These churches also display a plain Cistercian-like simplicity in form, a reflection not only of that monastic order but the presence of the mendicants and the latent belief system of the Cathars that rejected materiality. They also use hallmarks of military and ecclesiastic architecture in common with the region's cathedrals. However, many of these elements were not functional, suggesting they were an aesthetic choice. Some, in fact, were added artificially during the nineteenth century in order to celebrate the medieval heritage of France. I also address how bastides became bearers of meaning, addressing the issue of loose ties to Roman sources and the writings of Vitruvius. I also suggest possible ties to the Heavenly City of Jerusalem through churches that replicate the Holy Sepulchre and the similarity of their form and geometry to Beatus manuscripts depicting the Heavenly Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation. One such manuscript was made for the English monarchy the same decade that the English began founding bastides. However, the bastides also acquired meaning through ceremony, including the ritualistic raising of the pau staff bearing the arms of the founder and another reference to the local bishop riding into the bastide on a white mule. Through this examination of the bastides through their formal, ritualistic, and social context, we get a more holistic understanding of the production of space and meaning, and how such urban spaces were created and used over time.Art history, Architecture, Urban planning, Medieval historymjl2132Art History and ArchaeologyDissertationsSister City as Preservation Strategyhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:147523
Ogawa, Asukahttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:13386Wed, 06 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000This thesis examines how sister-city networks, particularly between the United States and Japan, can be used as a strategic tool to raise local heritage awareness and create a platform to promote historic preservation in both communities. By analyzing three case studies of U.S.-Japan sister cities: Seattle, WA - Kobe; Buffalo, NY - Kanazawa; and Elberton, GA - Mure; the thesis identifies that sister cities tend to share similar historical, cultural, or geographic characteristics, and argues that contacts with such overseas counterparts could stimulate cities to rediscover the value of local heritage, reconsider their preservation policies, and foster development of mutual cooperation and methodologies in heritage conservation and management. Following the analysis and comparison of preservation policies and practices in the two countries, the thesis presents major findings and recommendations, as well as a practical model that sister cities could pursue for an improvement on the use of their partnerships. The concluding chapter proposes how citizens in the U.S. and Japanese cities can benefit by learning from their oversea "sisters" in regards to a different set of preservation philosophies, and speaks about the significance of sister-city and other inter-city cooperation in the field of historic preservation in a wider context.International relations, Architectureao2368Historic PreservationMaster's thesesPicturesque Transformations: A. J. Davis in the Hudson Valley and Beyondhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:174680
Watson, Peter A.http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:13396Wed, 06 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000This thesis examines the role English landscape gardening played in shaping the career and working methods of the American architect Alexander Jackson Davis (1803â€1892) and its implications for preserving his surviving body of work in the Hudson Valley. The study is organized around a detailed study of four Davis country house projects (Blithewood, The Dr. Oliver Bronson House, Montgomery Place, and Locust Grove), each of which involve the redesign of an existing house and landscape into a radically different form; a specific mode of transformation that has a long history within English landscape gardening tradition. What emerges from this study is a very different view of A. J. Davis's professional identity than has been traditionally appreciated and a different way to "read" his watercolor drawings. In an era before the professionalization of the architectural discipline, English landscape gardening offered Davis an attractive working model to practice architecture as an artist, using his compositional skills to create artistically cohesive scenes in real landscapes blending the techniques of landscape painting and architectural design. All of this was shaped by English precedents Davis learned about through his participation in the early National Academy of Design under Samuel F. B. Morse (1791â€1872) and Davis's documented reading of English landscape gardening books. Following such influential English role models as Humphry Repton (1752â€1818), Davis designed onsite rather than drafting plans and elevations in the office, working to capture the actual conditions of light and shade, texture and color, in his designs and compositions. And like Repton, Davis was equally concerned with both "aspects" and "prospects," the way architecture formed a part of the landscape composition and framed the view outward. This thesis explores how Davis employed landscape gardening in four major country house commissions, documenting the existing conditions before he arrived on the scene and the process by which both the architectural elements in the landscape and the landscape itself was transformed over time into unified picturesque compositions. Understanding Davis in this way has major implications for preservation and interpretation of his surviving work. Landscape restoration assumes an equal position with architectural restoration. To assist current preservation work, this thesis offers a set of recommended strategies for each of the four case study sites that flow directly from the analysis and Davis's conception of landscape and architecture as inseparable parts of a single artistic whole.Architecturepaw2123Historic PreservationMaster's thesesEarly Twentieth Century "Face Brick" as a National Industry: The Textures, Colors, and Sizes of Face Brick + The Development of the Industryhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:174677
Rosen, Julie M.http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:13394Wed, 06 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000By the late-nineteenth century the brick industry was largely mechanized. In accordance with the changing technologies' capacity to produce greater numbers of increasingly uniform products (in shape, color and durability), the notion of—and market for—"face brick" changed drastically during this time. It was because of this newfound uniformity that face brick ultimately became fully differentiated from the lower-quality "common brick" product. Over the next decades, architects and builders became increasingly interested in the use of textured and multi-colored face brick for the exterior of buildings. This was a strict departure from the earlier years of largely smooth-surfaced brick production. The production of face brick was truly a national industry by the 19-teens, and it was reported that in 1915 face brick was produced in forty-two states across the United States. The widespread location of good brickmaking clays, rail transportation, and product marketing all contributed to the success of the face brick industry. Research on this topic revolves around color, texture and size of early twentieth century face brick and explores the ways in which product trends evolved throughout the decades before and after the turn of the new century. Research has also been undertaken on the role and development of technology in production—how raw materials, equipment and methods changed to reflect evolving aesthetic trends. Production methods (soft-mud, stiff-mud, dry-press, re-press) have been investigated, as has the role of face brick manufacturers in the evolution of brick size standardization within the larger building brick industry. The rapid evolution of face brick production processes, terminology, and aesthetics over the course of approximately sixty years (1880-1940) created an ever-growing national face brick industry that was cemented by the 1912 establishment of the American Face Brick Association. The development of this association has been traced, revealing its early role in the aesthetic and terminological standardization of products, as well as its publication of a large number of catalogs which no doubt led to the widespread use of face brick on buildings large and small, in a multitude of urban and suburban environments across the country. In the late 1930s, the American Face Brick Association merged with several other clay products associations to form the Structural Clay Products Institute, the predecessor of today's Brick Industry Association. This research has revealed a strong connection to not only today's preservation professionals, but to clay brick industry members such as manufacturers and distributors. Due to the historical nature of the brick trade and the lack of organized documentation of early twentieth century face brick, however, it is often difficult to visually identify, research, and subsequently reproduce a deteriorated face brick product. Knowledge of historic production methods and products is therefore essential for both preservation consultants and trade-oriented participants of a face brick restoration project, particularly as increasing numbers of face brick preservation projects are likely in the coming years.Architecturejmv2200Historic PreservationMaster's thesesReconfiguring Montcalm Farm: A Prototype for a New Cross-Disciplinary Approach to Preserving Rural Architecturehttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:147469
Marsh, Michael H.http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:13381Tue, 05 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000At its core, this thesis is an acknowledgment that peri-urban development will always take the most expedient form â€“ most often total architectural and programmatic erasure â€” unless an alternative approach is demonstrated to be both economically feasible and programmatically desirable by its potential users. The thesis will argue that in rare cases , the architectural vestiges and programmatic legacy of a given site may inherently hold sufficient historic, social, cultural, and/or spatial value so as to be worthy of assimilation and reconfiguration, rather than total replacement. The thesis is explicitly concerned with the vast quantity of rural and vernacular fabric at the periphery of urban and suburban sprawl, which falls outside of the traditional classification of historic structures as defined by the Secretary of the Interior's 'Standards' and is consequently ineligible for state or federal funding, and therefore must fend for itself. Rather than viewing such conditions as unfortunate impediments to the preservation process, the thesis seeks to leverage those very forces which threaten these historic properties as a catalyst for layering a renewed vitality upon such sites. Exploring a primarily obsolete former dairy farm located in northern Virginia as a case study for such conditions, the thesis will argue for an alternative approach to peri-urban development, which negotiates between the two extremes of tabula-rasa razing and embalmed 'ghost town.' Recognizing that the 'dignity' of farmland has always been rooted in its self-sufficiency and productive vitality, a modern program will be proposed for the 225 acre property, which will seek to revitalize the site while maintaining continuity and interaction with its five existing programs, and introduce a new 'economic engine' capable of generating sufficient income to support the continued viability of the property.Architecturemhm2145Historic PreservationMaster's thesesOn the Shores of Education: Urban Bodies, Architectural Repetitions, and the Mythic Space of End Timeshttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:147420
Moffett, Christopherhttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:13363Tue, 05 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000Orienting around Plato's allegory of the cave, this dissertation looks back to earlier mythological and historical roots and forward to the spatial aesthetics of "occupation" and "No Child Left Behind," to trace the enduring connection between philosophies and practices of education and sacrificial journeys of descent and emergence. This thematic work of repetition, birth and death, is not so much knowable as it is the privileged way in which we enact and recognize knowing itself. Education, as a spatial practice and a narrative rehearsal, is a way of situating ourselves and organizing our places. Urban Education, rather than being a beleaguered branch of Education proper, cleaves to the very project of Education, emerging as it does out of cities. This is an examination of the philosophical, architectural, urban, aesthetic, and embodied conditions and strategies by which we learn to remember and forget ourselves.Philosophy of education, Architecture, Urban planningArts and Humanities, Philosophy and EducationDissertationsSoHo: Beyond Boutiques and Cast Iron: The Significance, Legacy, and Preservation of the Pioneering Artist Community's Cultural Heritagehttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:147426
Ranney, Susiehttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:13365Tue, 05 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000Fifty years ago, though the buildings stood, "SoHo" did not yet exist in name or concept. Instead, the area referred to by some as "Hell's Hundred Acres" was considered to be a dying, industrial relic filled with unappealing buildings. Today, though built landscape of SoHo has largely remained the same, SoHo is synonymous with success, affluence, and upscale retail and loft real estate. Even those with prior familiarity with the past fifty years of history in SoHo must actively search for clues to this shift when walking the streets of SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District in the present day. For the historic preservation field, SoHo stands as one of the pivotal successes in securing the perpetual protection and regulation of a significant historic landscape and proving the value of preservation to the city and broader culture. Yet standing in the midst of this Landmark Historic District, there is little to remind us of the particular community that directly contributed to the survival of the district. The intent of this thesis is to use a critical study of the span of preservation intervention in the SoHo district of Manhattan to inspire the responsible stewardship of the early artist community's cultural heritage in the public memory and the physical environment of SoHo. This thesis also raises awareness that SoHo embodies concerns beyond its district boundaries: the belittling of the early artists' SoHo provides but one example of a community whose cultural and physical heritage has been overlooked due to factors (often) beyond its control and calls attention to the particular vulnerability of artist communities to fall victim to such neglect (typically in the very landscapes that they helped to revive). While much of the physical landscape of the early artists has indeed been irrevocably deprived of its authentic character, preservation of the community's memory and cultural heritage is not a lost cause. The thesis concludes with suggestions for interventions within the current preservation frameworks as well as how the preservation system might be improved to better accommodate historic artifacts with multiple layers and types of significance, a critical consideration as both the heritage artifacts and their designations mature.Architecturesr2882Historic PreservationMaster's thesesThe Commuter's Cathedral: An Examination of the George Washington Bridge Bus Stationhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:147441
Taylor, Michelle A.http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:13370Tue, 05 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000Commissioned in 1959 by the Port of Authority New York and New Jersey, the George Washington Bridge Bus Station provided a much needed commuter transportation hub for residents living in the suburbs of Northern New Jersey since its opening in 1963. Located in the Washington Heights neighborhood of upper Manhattan, the Bus Station is an architectural and structural gem designed by the celebrated Italian engineer Pier Luigi Nervi (1891-1979). In the nearly fifty years since its completion, the Bus Station has received a combination of praise and derision. Despite its pedigree and important role in the greater tri-state area, a full examination of its history, aesthetic, form and function has never been completed. This thesis contextualizes the Bus Station as part of a larger project to improve and overhaul the transportation infrastructure across the greater New York metropolitan area. It is an examination that explores the cultural, demographic and transportation shifts and developments on both sides of the Hudson River throughout much of the twentieth century. Along with an analysis of the Bus Station, this thesis explores how the philosophy and approach of Pier Luigi Nervi merged with the needs, politics and wants of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Furthermore, the George Washington Bridge Bus Station is recognized for its intricately crafted reinforced concrete forms, signature details by the great Italian "master-builder." Yet, unlike many of his barrel-vaulted domes and expansive exhibition spaces, Nervi utilized a distinct multi-peak roofline for the George Washington Bridge Bus Station. This research examines construction and significance of one of Nervi's earliest American projects within the continuum of Nervi's career and the context of an aesthetic expression of engineering. The George Washington Bridge Bus Station is a distinct structure not just within New York, but within the greater scope of all of Nervi's work.Architecturemat2180Historic PreservationMaster's thesesThe History of Terra-Cotta Glaze-Fit Testing and Artificial Weathering Methodologies and a Comparative Testing Program of Their Impact on Glaze Failurehttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:147444
Rosenblatt, Sarahhttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:13371Tue, 05 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000Terra cotta failure is often due to glaze defects, including crazing, crawling, and spall. The makeup of both the clay body and the glaze, and manufacturing processes, are of paramount importance in the prevention of these defects. As part of the fabrication process, ceramicists often put terra-cotta wares through a variety of tests to aid in the prediction of a product's durability. Artificial weathering is a valuable technique for gaining such information. Today there are common procedures in place published by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) and Building Research Establishment (BRE) to mimic the freeze-thaw cycles, moisture, and presence of salts that are typical in real-world conditions. When terra cotta was still a relatively new product in the early 20th century, however, these procedures were not standardized, and neither were techniques for terra cotta production. This thesis explores historic tests that were utilized to improve the longevity of terra cotta as an architectural material. I assembled a chronology, and examined trends seen in testing, focusing on tests that either studied glaze fit or utilized artificial weathering. The unconventionality of some of these tests, when considered in the context of modern procedures, led me to wonder how effective they might have been. I also wondered if there could have been useful information that had been lost on today's industry over the near century since the height of terra cotta's use. Since there was not a clear connection between many of the historic and contemporary tests, it seemed likely that they could produce relatively diverse results and provide different types of information for ceramicists and conservators. In order to better understand and ultimately evaluate these weathering techniques, I put samples from various New York City buildings through both historic and contemporary methods of artificial weathering. These tests were then evaluated for their ability to increase the possibility of glaze failure by performing surface adhesion pull-tests. Although the results of these final tests were numerically scattered, they still provided useful insight into the value of the weathering tests that had been reproduced.Architecturescr2130Historic PreservationMaster's thesesDolomitic Lime Mortars: Carbonation Complications and Susceptibility to Acidic Sulfateshttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:147432
Hartshorn, Heatherhttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:13367Tue, 05 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000Dolomitic lime mortars, widely used in historic construction and as repair mortars today, are distinguished by their high magnesium content as well as their high plasticity, water retention, and workability. However, the dolomitic lime creates a more complicated chemistry in the resulting mortar in which the magnesium and calcium compounds carbonate at different rates. Although portlandite readily carbonates to calcite, the carbonation of brucite is delayed and could result in a variety compounds in the cured mortar. The reaction of these magnesium compounds with acidic sulfates in the environment could lead to the formation of magnesium sulfate salts, which have the potential to deteriorate the mortar itself and surrounding materials. Mortar deterioration could also occur due to the dissolution of the magnesium compounds in the mortar and subsequent material losses. A series of experiments have been conducted that examine the carbonation of dolomitic lime mortars as well as the extent to which these mortars interact with acidic sulfates. First the production of dolomitic lime was simulated in a laboratory setting, using XRD and SEM to determine the chemical and physical changes that occur during the calcining process. The same analytical techniques were used to examine the level of carbonation in dolomitic lime model mortars. The fundamental reactivity of acidic sulfate solutions with certain compounds in dolomitic mortars was explored using AA. Acidic sulfate attack via acid rain was also simulated on model mortars, and the effects of that exposure analyzed by AA and XRD. Laboratory work for this thesis was conducted at Columbia University GSAPP's Architecture Conservation Laboratory, the Department of Scientific Research at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Highbridge Materials Consulting, Inc.Architecturehrh2117Historic PreservationMaster's thesesNavigating the Post-Disaster Landscape: Historic Preservation and Recovery in Three New Orleans Neighborhoodshttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:147435
Piper, Emilyhttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:13368Tue, 05 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the coast of the Gulf Coast of Mexico and devastated broad swathes of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. The Hurricane itself was designated a Category 3 Storm at landfall, yet it was the unprecedented extend of its aftermath that marked the event as the costliest natural disaster — and one of the five deadliest hurricanes — in the history of the United States. The storm dealt its most devastating blow indirectly to the City of New Orleans, Louisiana, where it triggered the most significant human tragedy as eighty percent of the city flooded when the engineered levee systems failed. This thesis acknowledges the human dimension of the event by examining the impact of the disaster on the physical built environment of three New Orleans neighborhoods that contribute part of the city's historic landscape. The storm, and its prolonged aftermath, altered the cultural landscape of the city — destroying entire neighborhoods, displacing whole communities, and jarring the city's identity. This thesis uses the event of Hurricane Katrina, and its aftermath, to reflect on how the legal frameworks of preservation have shaped the city of New Orleans and how they continue to reshape the city. The goal of this thesis is three-fold. To examine the preservation frameworks in place before the disaster and to identify New Orleans's particular sense of place. To discuss how these frameworks have been impacted following the disaster. And, to think about how the new and old frameworks reshape the city — engaging new constituencies in preservation, and broadening an understanding of what is "historic" in New Orleans.Architectureefp2116Historic PreservationMaster's thesesOn Never Mistaking Culture for an End: The Influence of Cultural Aesthetics in Architectural Conservationhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:147462
Kovacich-Harper, Peter Johnhttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:13379Tue, 05 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000As a title, On Never Mistaking Culture for an End has a meaning which is multivalent, one that is addressed in the beginning sections of this thesis in a discourse that acknowledges the influence of cultural aesthetics on the architectural conservator. Cultural aesthetics form the conservator's presumptions, as well as the biases that guide their work. As conservators it would serve us well to embrace the ultimate subjectivity of our actions and to internalize the notion that cultural influences seep into every actions we undertake. We are cultural agents. It may be understood that the conservator is a powerful interlocutor of meaning. The ultimate subjectivity of conservation as a practice is a great and good thing as long as this agency is acknowledged and is understood with a movement toward restraint and temperance, one that calls for an ever-present critique of judgment. This acknowledgment of the agency of the conservator necessarily leads to the reevaluation of attitudes toward perceptual objects and historic architecture. With this reevaluation of cultural works a new awareness grows. Material aspects, which have long been suppressed under the influence of the cultural aesthetics formed within hygienic modernism and the industrial complex in the twentieth-century, may now be understood as being the self-same aspects that recount the conserved object's passage through time. These aspects are what we may call temporal traces: signs of weathering, scars incurred by human violence, and the worn appearance accumulated with the quotidian happenings of human life. The recalibration of our understanding of material manifestations and transformations that appear with the passage of time may lead ultimately to the alternative notion that cultural manifestations have a dynamic life â€” that they are never definite or limited in their presence or countenance â€” that they must never be understood as ends/termini of attitudes, beliefs, etc. — that theirs is a vital existence with an ever-changing form and character. Companion to the assault by various expressions of modernization, other modernities, found in the fine arts world, lend counterpoint to the more widely held approach to temporal traces. The weathered, the scarred, and the worn are in parts of this world venerated, and thus we are offered an alternative means of conceptualization. We must hear out the stories of the past, as well as of contemporary movements, which venerate those material aspects destroyed in other quarters before passing final judgment. Given the full breadth of cultural exploits we may interpret these temporal traces differently #151; we may endeavor to engage the information and lessons in perception borne out of diverse and seemingly disparate manifestations of culture. Culture is a mysterious thing, its influence seeps quietly, many times undetected, between expressive forms #151; past, present, and future, penetrating those clumsy walls one may put up out of comfort or pretense. It is important to understand the relationship between ideas and cultural energies so that we may attempt to gauge the consequences of our actions. All cultural pursuits, especially architectural conservation, may gain from a measure of proportion in their practice, as well as an expansiveness of seeing. Our lives, our point of view, are born of collage. Once the fragmentary assemblage that is the human mind is acknowledged we may begin to see how freely we may draw from the cultural experience of the world to audit our actions #151; to challenge our presumptions and own biases. The ultimate goal in exploring the treatment of temporal traces in architectural conservation is a pervasive sense of grey #151; an acknowledgement of doubt, colored by curiosity #151; which serves to provoke invention and discourse within conservation practice. And in a somewhat circular manner, we may ultimately acknowledge the generative quality of human perception.Architecture, Aestheticspjk2125Historic PreservationMaster's thesesThe Old World, the New World, and the World to Come: Interpreting Bayside Cemeteryhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:147478
Mittelman, Esther Suzannehttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:13384Tue, 05 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000Over the past several decades, Bayside Cemetery, in Ozone Park, Queens, has suffered from grievous mistreatment, vandalism, and neglect. Attempts at restoration have largely fallen flat, resulting in cycles of "clean-up" and deterioration. As a Jewish cemetery serving a very particular historic constituency that is no longer viable, Bayside has had trouble maintaining the kind of public relevance that engenders a successful preservation. Nevertheless, Bayside is emblematic of a specific, often underrepresented moment in American Jewish history: the unprecedented, large-scale mid-19th century emigration of worldly "German" Jews to the United States, and their enduring cultural influence on subsequent generations of their co-religionists in the New World. As such, the site deserves to be saved. This thesis seeks to make the case for interpreting Bayside as a means toward preservation. To that end, it establishes the significance of Bayside Cemetery through an exploration of its physical fabric, locates the Jewish cemetery within the canon of American cemetery interpretation, and proposes a plan for the interpretation of the site for the public.Architecture, Judaic studiesem2125Historic PreservationMaster's thesesThe World War II Defense Housing Community of Aero Acres: Case Study for the Future Preservation of Historic Planned Suburban Communitieshttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:147475
Marks, Elyse Margueritehttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:13382Tue, 05 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000Aero Acres is a small suburban neighborhood located in Middle River, Maryland. The Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Company constructed the neighborhood in 1941 as affordable working-class housing for the laborers who worked at, and operated from, their aircraft factory, located just beyond the urban fabric of Baltimore. All of the homes in this neighborhood were constructed using a prefabricated artificial building material known as "Cemesto", created by the Celotex Corporation in the 1930's and marketed by the Pierce Foundation as an affordable defense housing option. The product consists of panels of pressed sugar-cane fiber sprayed with a coat of asbestos cement on each side. Each panel was a modular four-by-twelve-foot unit that slid horizontally into a light wooden frame, which made the system cost-effective and construction simple and fast. The houses of Aero Acres were designed by the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and are representative of a very important, but often overlooked, prefabricated typology and present an exceptionally important example of wartime architecture, planning, and construction techniques. Aero Acres stands today as a prime example of one of the only pre-Pearl Harbor defense housing projects remaining in the United States, and is counted among the country's oldest working-class suburbs. Presently, Aero Acres functions in essentially the same way as it did when it was constructed seventy years ago. A large percentage of the original wartime units survive, though altered by their owners in a variety of ways. In most cases, the Cemesto panels are sealed inside the interior and exterior wall siding of other materials. Designating these houses is a challenge where alterations of existing design elements, as well as additions to the original unit, pose problems with respect to traditionally held views of how much integrity this neighborhood retains because these homes have been changed over time. Using Aero Acres as a case study, I will seek to resolve preservation issues dealing with historic integrity in historic suburban communities. In order to retain the integrity of this neighborhood, one must seek to preserve the intended functionality of each housing unit, thus retaining systematic wholeness within the community, through a preservation plan that recognizes the architectural origins of the community in conjunction with their expansion and logical evolution at the hands of the homeowner. Therefore, I am proposing a set of designs for several addition options to existing units, as well as new construction, or infill options, that can encourage a process of sustained evolution that is a marriage of both the original and present-day intentions of the development. These assorted design schemes will present variations that seek to address and anticipate future growth within the neighborhood, while simultaneously functioning harmoniously in conjunction with the significant programmatic and visual elements of the original design.Architectureemm2238Historic PreservationMaster's thesesThe Rise of the Mallhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:161392
Ortega, Lauren E.http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:13374Tue, 05 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000This thesis builds a case for the significance of the regional shopping center—the mall—within the context of postwar American suburbs. Through an analysis of its history, design and the culture it created, the role of the mall within the greater landscape of suburban development arises as a critical component within the social and architectural systems of suburbia. During an era when the suburban development was exploding prewar concepts of what defined a 'suburb', the regional mall arose as a centralizing force within the sprawl. As a new building type, the mall was designed as a civic and commercial center, a place where social life could convene and flourish. Plans and speeches from mall designers were full of idealistic rhetoric yet the mall's overwhelming success proved its necessity. It was the public's response to the mall that allowed it to achieve its idealistic goals and take its place a suburban center. This role within the larger historic framework of the suburbs has been underplayed and as a result, many historic malls are being demolished or severely changed without any discussion of their significance. This thesis discusses the possible futures of historic malls and the challenges they face that prevent many from the wrecking ball. The mall's past as a civic and social center for suburban life defines its significance for preservation today. The reincarnation of this role is also that which can save the mall and define a new future for this unique suburban building.American studies, Architectureley2105Historic PreservationMaster's thesesThe Patrimonialization of Old Montreal or, Preserving a Monument, a Cultural Resource, and a Heritage Space for the Modern Metropolishttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:161395
Poole, Adam Kalebhttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:13375Tue, 05 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000The Historic Monuments Commission of Quebec declared Old Montreal an historic district in 1964 but that was hardly the beginning or the end of its preservation. This thesis explores what it meant for Old Montreal to be preserved and the long process whereby that happened. Specifically it proposes that there were three general ways that the place was understood as something to keep: as an historic monument, as cultural property, and as a heritage space. While they are roughly embodied in the three versions of preservation law in Quebec and informed by international preservation discourse, each had its own players, its own important sites, and its own political agenda specific to the district. Moreover, each had its own methodology of preservation. Having brought us up more or less to the present day, this thesis concludes by speculating on the challenges that will face the district's preservation as the current paradigm develops.Architectureakp2127Historic PreservationMaster's thesesBuilding Community in Kleindeutschland: The Role of German Immigration in Shaping New York City's Seventeenth Wardhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:174671
Kuhnert, Matthew J.http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:13369Tue, 05 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000The German immigrants who settled in Manhattan's Seventeenth Ward during the nineteenth century profoundly shaped the social and cultural framework of the neighborhood's built fabric and community life, establishing the area's distinct character as a working-class residential district. The array of dwellings and institutions that were designed and constructed for the needs of German immigrants provided a vital infrastructure as they have been adapted by successive generations of inhabitants. This thesis explores three aspects of the influence of German migration on the physical fabric of New York in the city's Seventeenth Ward. Chapter One investigates the impact of German immigration on residential real estate development and how it produced a dense tenement district whose fabric would become the dominant characteristic of the neighborhood. Chapter Two examines the meeting halls and social clubs built to house German voluntary organizations in order to illustrate how immigrants used these buildings to shape community, create meaning, and navigate the nuances of a new life in a foreign country. Finally, Chapter Three explores the values inherent in this historic built fabric as understood by the later residents of the neighborhood, and describes the efforts of tenant organizers to preserve social cohesion and a sense of place in the face of urban renewal after the Second World War. This research allows for a better appreciation of how a distinct German-American presence helped to shape the modern American city, and provides a window by which we can also better understand the role of immigrants in the formation of a vibrant urbanism. Furthermore, this narrative suggests that the traditional tools by which historic preservation safeguards historic buildings may be inadequate for places like the East Village where social and economic values also underlie the visible surfaces of the vernacular urban landscape and endow it with special meaning.Architecture, American historymjk2179Historic PreservationMaster's thesesConcealed Certainty and Undeniable Conjecture: Interpreting Marginalized Heritagehttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:174683
Taylor, Tatum Alanahttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:13376Tue, 05 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000This thesis explores the predicament of interpreting historic sites that represent under-documented and otherwise underrepresented communities. After discussing the reinterpretation of sites related to the story of slavery—such as the Underground Railroad, Monticello, and Colonial Williamsburg—as a precedent, it focuses on house museums linked to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. Five museums in New York State exemplify respective challenges to interpretation: the evolving language of identity, the questions of biographical and site‐based relevance, political controversy, and difficulties arising from stakeholders and resources. These case studies contribute to the conclusion that interpreters should not categorically suppress controversy and informed conjecture at historic sites, as both can contribute to a site’s ongoing heritage narrative.Architecture, GLBT studiestat2125Historic PreservationMaster's thesesThe Kiln in the Garden: Damariscotta River Brick Making and the Traces of Maine's Agro-Industrial Pasthttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:174840
Cleemann, Jorgen G.http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:13372Tue, 05 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000This thesis explores the history of the brick-making industry along the Damariscotta River in coastal Maine and links that history to a vast industrial landscape that remains in evidence today. Although bricks had been made in this region since the time of the first European settlements, the scale of the industry did not achieve any significance until the second quarter of the nineteenth century. This corresponds precisely with the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, a historical development that flooded eastern markets with cheap western foodstuffs and led to the increasing marginalization of struggling New England farmers. Unable to compete profitably with the rising agricultural behemoths in the west, these farmers diversified the sorts of incoming-generating activities that were practiced on farms. In the Damariscotta River region, this included the production of bricks for commercial sale. Although farmers in other parts of Maine and northern New England may have engaged in brick-making as a component of this same broad phenomenon, the practice has received very little scholarly attention to date. This intimate interrelationship with agriculture emerges in a close study of all aspects of the brickmaking industry. The technological means by which the bricks were made remained fairly technologically primitive throughout the nineteenth century, employing only a few simple "machines." The low-technology aspect of Damariscotta River brick making ensured that it was also low-cost, a quality that made it particularly attractive to the farmers who would periodically adopt the activity as necessary as a means to supplement their incomes. Brick making as a regional business expanded and contracted regularly over the course of the nineteenth century, responding to the vicissitudes in the market and other external factors. At its peak, the Damariscotta River brick-making industry produced bricks that were shipped to ports up and down the eastern seaboard and into the Caribbean, although Boston always remained the principal destination. Throughout this period, Damariscotta River brick makers almost always identified themselves as farmers or had some other close relationship—usually familial—to farming. The industry disappeared around the turn of the twentieth century due to a number of converging factors, including the decline of shipping, the rising costs of raw materials, the growing mistrust between the brick makers and the agents who negotiated the sales, and the incompatibility of local clays with the more mechanized forms of brick making that produced a higher quality product. The existence of the historical Damariscotta River brick-making industry is most evident today in the form of a large, nearly contiguous industrial landscape that comprises dozens of former brickyard sites along the river banks. Although overgrown and somewhat difficult to distinguish from the seemingly pristine natural surroundings, each of these sites exhibits a range of landscape features that marks it as a former brickyard. These include former clay quarries, roads, imprints left by the pug mills, drying yards, log- or stone-lined wharves, and, most spectacularly, beaches lined with countless cast-off bricks. Some sites are even located adjacent to extant crop fields and pastures, and thereby illustrate spatially the industry's close relationship with agriculture. Such sites present an excellent potential for future efforts in preservation and interpretation. By providing the history for the industry and identifying the sites where its story can be told most effectively, this thesis can lead to the preservation of the memory of brick making in the Damariscotta River region.Architecturejc2982Historic PreservationMaster's thesesPreserving Postmodern Architecture and the Legacy of Charles W. Moorehttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:147398
Ryan, Kaitlin E.http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:13356Mon, 04 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000Charles Moore is central to understanding the continuum extant between Modern and Postmodern architecture. This is not simply because he practiced architecture from the mid-1950s through 1993, spanning the time period between these two styles; it is also because his architecture, writing and teaching bridged the practical and theoretical tenets of both movements. Moore maintains a unique position among his contemporaries in that he was both a modernist and postmodernist in many ways. Deeply influenced by modernists William Wurster and Louis Kahn, Moore also drew upon Roger Bailey's appreciation for history and the Beaux Arts curriculum as well as Jean Labatut's phenomenological emphasis on human experience of historical places. The design-build mentality that Moore adopted from Roger Bailey and William Wurster along with the purity of form derived from Louis Kahn's teaching, reflect the inherently modern qualities of his designs. His explorations with interior and exterior space, color, light and creating a "sense of place" represent the postmodern innovations that Moore brought to the field. He was an inclusivist, which signifies a departure from his predecessors and an approach that greatly shaped his lasting influence. This research seeks to answer how Moore's role in the context of the late twentieth century is central to understanding the significance that his work, writing and pedagogical influence had on contemporaries and students alike. And furthermore, can that understanding inform the way in which his work can be approached in the preservation context? To that end, this thesis presents Moore's biographical background and contextual history along with a discussion of three commissions that were central to his body of work: Kresge College (1973) at the University of California, Santa Cruz; the Piazza d'Italia (1978) in New Orleans, Louisiana; and the Moore/Andersson Compound (1984) in Austin, Texas. The temporal and ephemeral qualities inherent in much of Moore's work were characteristic of the time period and paralleled in the work of other architects practicing at the time, most notably Robert Venturi. These qualities pose unique challenges to preservation from a theoretical and practical perspective. This research presents a lens through which those challenges and opportunities can be understood and further explored. Moore's influence is evident in the work of many of his students, a great number of whom are successful in their own right, including Billie Tsien, Brian Mackay-Lyons, and Turner Brooks. His lasting impact is also apparent in the ongoing success of his former firms: Centerbrook Architects in Centerbrook, Connecticut; Moore Ruble Yudell in Santa Monica, California; and Andersson/Wise Architects in Austin, Texas. These firms continue to thrive twenty years after Moore's death, reiterating the continued influence that Charles Moore has had on architectural practice and teaching.Architectureker2137Historic PreservationMaster's thesesRethinking Industrial Heritage: A Discussion of the Preservation of Compromised and Contested Cultural Landscapes in Butte, Montanahttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:147401
LaFever, Alison M.http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:13357Mon, 04 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000Nicknamed the "Richest Hill on Earth," the city of Butte, Montana, is one of the most significant industrial heritage sites in the world. It is touted as being the largest and longest running single copper mining site in the history of the United States, and between 1887 and 1920, the copper mines of Butte, along with the smelting facilities in the neighboring community of Anaconda, were the largest producer of copper in the world. In many ways, the mining industry has both created and physically destroyed the cultural landscape of Butte, contributing to a complex identity that continues to define the place today. This dichotomy creates specific challenges with regard to the preservation of cultural resources related to industrial heritage in Butte. This thesis evaluates the specific challenges associated with industrial heritage preservation in Butte by applying a few conceptual theories that are at the foundation of scholarship in the field. It attempts to expand the current definition of industrial heritage that is applied in Butte in order to explore the ways in which the city's industrial heritage can be fully understood and incorporated into the big picture of Butte's ongoing preservation efforts through a variety of tools and strategies. The discussion advocates for why the preservation of Butte's unique industrial heritage is important as well as addresses the larger issue related to the lack of appreciation of industrial heritage landscapes within the field of historic preservation as a whole.Architectureaml2219Historic PreservationMaster's thesesLaser cleaning of Polychrome Alabasterhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:147383
Lorenzon, Martahttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:13351Mon, 04 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000This research aims at analyzing the effect of laser cleaning on polychrome alabaster surfaces. As cleaning is an integral part in the conservation process, laser cleaning has been used with satisfying results in stone conservation to remove encrustation. Alongside to the aesthetically pleasing results, it is relevant to determine that laser cleaning does not have any adverse effects. Compared to the more traditional techniques, laser cleaning has many additional advantages: The diameter of the laser beam can be regulated so that areas of different dimensions can be treated. There is no physical contact between the object to be cleaned and the laser equipment. This aspect can be really relevant in treating fragile materials. Laser can be a selective tool: it can be regulated to remove dirt, without affecting the original material underneath. Lasers are effective in removing pollution encrustation from stone objects and have been used in conservation since the 1970s. Particularly the aim of this project is to determine whether laser cleaning is a suitable cleaning technique for materials like polychrome alabaster. For painted materials, laser cleaning can be an effective technique but it requires an in-depth study of the laser photochemical and photomechanical effects to avoid irreversible damage of the painted layers. If the outcome of this study is positive, laser cleaning can be added to the range of techniques used for cleaning polychrome artifacts, archaeological structures and historic buildings made of alabaster.Architectureml3307Historic PreservationMaster's thesesNeo-traditional, volcanic pozzolan-lime mortars for the repair of historic structureshttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:147404
Baragona, Anthony Johnhttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:13358Mon, 04 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000The object of this research is to examine the possibilities of using naturally occurring volcanic pozzolans in lime-cement mortars for the repair of historic structures. Water vapor transmissivity, tensile splitting strength and set time are crucial performance criteria for historic repair mortars. Mortars samples were prepared from three different pozzolans: ground pozzolana from Pozzuoli, Italy; ground Rhenish trass from Andernach, Germany; and ground ash from Mount St. Helens in Washington State. The samples were tested by Vicat apparatus (per ASTM C807) during their initial set to gauge pozzolanic activity levels. After a curing period, the samples were tested for rate of water vapor transmission (per ASTM E96) as well as subjected to tensile strength testing (per ASTM D3967). The resultant data was compared to that of control mortar samples made of portland cement and lime, comparable to ASTM 'Type N' and 'Type O' mortars commonly used in repair of historic structures. While this research is specifically tailored to examine the applicability of using pozzolans in mortars for repair of historic structures (especially those near water or in areas of high humidity), its findings are also pertinent in a wider context to the concrete and construction industries, in particular with regards to the burgeoning field of 'green' or environmentally friendly materials. This thesis concludes that it is possible to formulate repair mortars using volcanic pozzolans and lime that exhibit qualities that make them suitable for a wide range of historic repair scenarios.Architectureasb2204Historic PreservationMaster's thesesArchitecture of Compromise: A History and Evaluation of Facadism in Washington, DChttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:147377
Wood, Kerensa Sanfordhttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:13349Mon, 04 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000The concern for the protection of a society's architectural and cultural heritage has long been a discussion among historians, architects, and state leaders; later, planners, preservationists, local neighborhood organizations, and municipal officials. The crux of these concerns is how to preserve the architectural and cultural legacy of a place while modernizing and accommodating growth. Most often, a building is preserved or a building is demolished. However, in some cases, there is a middle ground in which an attempt to satisfy the demands of all stakeholders is made. The physical manifestation of this is what preservationists call "facadism"â€”the action by which the faÃ§ade or facades of a building are retained and preserved while the rest of the building is demolished in order to construct a new, often larger building behind the retained facade. Facadism is inarguably a compromise between preservationists who seek to preserve the building in its entirety for future generations and developers who seek to maximize the rate of return on investment by maximizing rentable space and providing modern amenities to increase asking rents. The discussion becomes one of economics versus significance. When these discussions end in facadism, it results in the significant loss of integrity and context of a historic building. Many cities and towns have enacted historic preservation ordinances to protect historic resources against development pressures. If there are strong ordinances in place to protect local landmarks, why have historic and eligible landmarks faced, and continue to face, facadism? Using Washington, D.C. as a case study, this thesis is an exploration into the history of compromise between developer and preservationist in urban development that resulted in facadism. Drawing from lawsuits, projects, policies, and regulations, this thesis analyzes and explains the conditions under which this phenomenon emerged in DC. Further, the thesis provides a new typology and vocabulary that redefines the discussion of facadism and interventions into historic structures, as well as a new point-system method by which to assess the successes and failures of these projects. These new tools can be applied and used in other cities to assess the successes and failures of compromised architecture and expand the dialogue on how to best balance the goals of preservation and development in the future.Architectureksw2115Historic PreservationMaster's thesesIn Situ Deacidification of Vernacular Wallpaperhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:147410
Loveman, Kaylahttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:13360Mon, 04 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000This thesis involved testing common proprietary deacidification sprays on vernacular wallpaper in situ. Inexpensive, mass-produced wallpaper is commonly overlooked by many conservators, whose efforts are more often directed toward the higher quality wallpapers that hang in the homes of historic luminaries. Cheaper wallpaper is just as relevant as these upscale counterparts, yet its materiality makes it more ephemeral and, therefore, in need of preservation efforts. Vernacular wallpaper was first produced in the middle of the 19th century, when wood pulp was introduced to the manufacturing process. A cheap alternative to cotton rags, wood pulp drove down the cost of production, making a traditionally expensive product available to nearly all Americans. The presence of wood pulp, however, also causes the wallpaper to deteriorate more quickly as the result of a higher acid content. Deacidification is a conservation method that was developed during the mid-20th century to preserve deteriorating library collections. By neutralizing the acids present in paper and providing an alkaline reserve to protect against future acids, deacidification is believed to prolong the lifespan of wood pulp paper. Although paper conservators usually treat wallpaper in a laboratory setting, there are cases in which its removal from the wall may be deemed inappropriate. Professional laboratory conservation may also be prohibitively expensive for smaller, low budget house museums that often include vernacular wallpaper. Proprietary deacidification products were therefore chosen for testing. Vernacular wallpaper was provided by The Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York City, where thousands of working class immigrants lived and worked between the 1860s and 1930s. The museum founders discovered the building in the 1980s with its residential floors exactly as they had been left when the building was condemned in 1935. The multiple layers of deteriorating wallpaper that remained in situ have become a defining feature of the museum and are preserved as integral architectural finishes. For this reason, and because most of the wallpaper is extremely brittle, in situ treatment is preferred. Three spray products were tested on the wallpaper at the Tenement Museum. In order to be considered successful, these products were required to neutralize wallpaper samples without significantly altering their appearance. One product performed successfully on most samples, another achieved the highest pH measurements and also caused the most visual change, and the third was ineffective and inconsistent. Further research on the long-term effects of deacidification is necessary before any product can be recommended for use.Architecturekml2167Historic PreservationMaster's thesesThe Evolution of the Weep-Holehttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:147407
Chiu, Alison Chih Waihttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:13359Mon, 04 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000Uncontrolled water intrusion through the envelope is perhaps the most common and insidious threat to success of a building's performance and its structural integrity. Introducing weep-holes into wall construction is one method meant to mitigate issues associated with dampness, by providing an outlet for drainage at the base of the wall cavity. The use of these small, interstitial elements is crucial to the long-term welfare of our building stock and also indirectly, to the health and well-being of building inhabitants. A major campaign to prevent dampness, stimulated by public health concerns in America and abroad during the 19th century, led to widespread development and use of the brick cavity wall in building construction. The hollow space within these double-wythe walls acted as an additional layer of weather protection and as a thermal barrier, but was also a new location where water could collect. This research traces the development of early cavity wall construction methods and theories employed in response to dampness problems during the late 19th century, and investigates concepts behind the rise in application of the weep-hole during the early 20th century.Architectureacc2169Historic PreservationMaster's thesesThe Building Program of Archbishop Walter de Gray: Architectural Production and Reform in the Archdiocese of York, 1215-1255http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:146922
Miller, Jeffrey Alexanderhttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:13226Mon, 14 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000Walter de Gray became archbishop of York in 1215 while attending the Fourth Lateran Council in Rome. King John of England recommended Walter for the role, and the new archbishop ruled for the next four decades with the skills of a well-connected royal administrator and a commitment to reforming his churches according to the principles advanced by the general council. Over the next four decades the archbishop reorganized and revitalized a province that had lost much of its stature through neglect and mismanagement by his predecessor. Architectural patronage played a central role in Gray's reform program, and it created four well-known Gothic edifices at the metropolitan church of York and at its dependent satellites, or minsters, Beverley, Ripon, and Southwell. Each construction project was supported by an indulgence from the archbishop and happened alongside important constitutional changes at each church. York Cathedral received a new transept as Gray campaigned for the canonization of a former archbishop and restructured the chapter and its offices. He rebuilt the damaged choir of Beverley Minster as a shrine to its bishop-founder St John while packing its prestigious chapter with trusted lieutenants. He completed Ripon Minster with a two-towered faÃ§ade after promoting its legendary saint Wilfrid and creating a rich new stall for the chapter. Gray also may have been instrumental in choosing the design for the new east end of Southwell Minster, where he provided new statutes and stipends for the resident canons. The institutional relationships and the programmatic significance of these monuments have not been considered previously, and the four studies here show that reform and rebuilding worked together successfully to raise the profile of York and its minsters. During the building campaigns Gray created new prebends and augmented benefices in order to recruit talented clergy, and he and his allies laid down new statutes to foster the professional ecclesiastic standards and education favored by the Lateran Council. New architectural settings encouraged veneration of local saints, and their stories as pious past prelates of York bolstered the reputation of Gray and his office. New chapels allowed for the founding of chantries, often endowed by the archbishop's handpicked churchmen, and these paid for extra masses and the elaborate liturgical schedules expected of important churches in thirteenth-century England. The story of Walter de Gray and his building program gives scholarly attention to a leading figure in English medieval history, and it provides a new historical structure for understanding several important Gothic churches that rarely find a place in the architectural history of the Middle Ages. Moreover, these four monuments serve as a test case by which to evaluate scholarly approaches to English Gothic architecture of the twelfth and thirteenth century that have attempted to go beyond stylistic analysis, particularly Peter Brieger's idea of an episcopal style.Art history, Architecture, Medieval historyjam2020Art History and ArchaeologyDissertationsThe German Garden City Movement: Architecture, Politics and Urban Transformation, 1902-1931http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:144007
Harris, Teresa Mariehttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:12406Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000This dissertation examines the German garden city movement from aesthetic, economic, and political vantage points in an attempt to determine how the leaders of the Deutsche Gartenstad-Gesellschaft (German Garden City Association) adapted the English movement to indigenous ideas and conditions. In particular, it gives an account of the central role of the Kampffmeyer cousins in shaping the intellectual framework of the movement. The Kampffmeyers synthesized the work of a variety of German architects and political economists into a coherent platform for the transformation of urban form and urban life. They and their cohorts embraced a model of society based upon collective ownership of land and emphasized communal benefits over individual profit. Despite their leftist leanings, the leaders of the organization divorced their activities from party politics and adopted pragmatic statutes that were vague enough to allow for the participation of more conservative members. The garden city movement overlapped with numerous turn-of-the-century reform efforts, most notably land reform, housing reform, women's rights and temperance, and proponents of the idea aimed to offer a physical space where those reforms could be enacted. Architects involved in the movement, such as Richard Riemerschmid, Heinrich Tessenow, and Bruno Taut, searched for new forms in urban planning and architecture to adequately express the realities of modern life and to facilitate the desired social reforms. Garden city communities were meant to combine the best of city and country and to incorporate both agricultural and industry; their architecture reflected this mixture, drawing on local vernacular styles and standardized, industrial elements. No prescription for the creation of garden city architecture existed other than the demands for simplicity and functionality common in much of the artistic discourse of the time, combined with a desire to give physical expression to the communal nature of the undertakings. This study investigates the full range of garden cities built in Germany, examining lesser-known examples such as Gartenstadt Marienbrunn outside Leipzig and Gartenstadt Stockfeld near Strasbourg, alongside more famous examples like Hellerau. In doing so, it illuminates the diversity of architectural experimentation that took place before World War I and the ways in which the garden cities laid the groundwork for the modernist housing settlements of the Weimar era.Art history, Architecturetmh2004Art History and ArchaeologyDissertationsArchitecture and the Production of Postcard Images: Tradition vs. Critical Regionalism in Curitibahttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:142147
Irazabal Zurita, Clara E.http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:11881Mon, 05 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000In Curitiba, Brazil, the building of architectural monuments that make use of a direct vocabulary of tradition has been one of the major means to construct the city image in the last two decades. The government of Curitiba has plagued the city with foreign-styled landmarks mostly based on selective samples of European traditions. Such attempts strive to construct a city image that creates a sense that Curitiba has a heritage connected with the European established traditions. Examples of those ethnic landmarks are the Polonaise Memorial, and the German, Italian and Portuguese parks. Such monuments depict a cosmopolitan, international city, freed from the tortuous memories of black slavery and Indian submission that tint history elsewhere in Brazil. This selective editing of history valorizes and idealizes parts of the pasts, while erasing others.Architecturecei2108Urban PlanningAbstractsLa arquitectura y la producción de imágenes de tarjeta postal. La invocación de la tradición versus el regionalismo crítico en Curitibahttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:132193
Irazabal Zurita, Clara E.http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:10423Thu, 19 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000Curitiba, metrópoli de 2.5 millones de habitantes en el estado sureño de Paraná, Brasil, ha realizado grandes esfuerzos en los últimos 35 años por mejorar SU imagen y calidad urbana, hasta el punto de alcanzar reconocimiento mundial y ser tenida por muchos como modelo de planeación y administración urbana. Si bien algunos de los aspectos de esta transformación han sido ampliamente documentados como el sistema de tránsito, la creación de parques urbanos y el desarrollo de programas de reciclaje- falta hacer aún una evaluación critica de su experiencia. A fin de contribuir a esta tarea el presente ensayo intenta, a partir del fenómeno en Curitiba, una discusión teórica y empírica de lo que se ha convertido en una tendencia mundial del nuevo siglo como invención y consumo de tradición. Discuto cómo los temas de trasfondo vernáculo son utilizados por los funcionarios del gobierno local para invocar las tradiciones arquitectónicas internacionales en beneficio de la imagen urbana y el desarrollo turístico de su ciudad. Finalmente, propongo que el regionalismo crítico es un enfoque alternativo que puede aprovechar mejor las oportunidades de desarrollo arquitectónico y urbano, de modo que sirva a las necesidades de la región y la vincule con la economía global de manera competitiva. Para ilustrar esta conclusión, analizo dos ejemplos arquitectónicos.Urban planning, Architecturecei2108Urban PlanningArticlesDo Pruitt-Igoe ao World Trade Center Planejando a Ex/Implosão do (Pós)Modernismohttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:132196
Irazabal Zurita, Clara E.http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:10424Thu, 19 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000O artigo discute, em meio a conceitos de pós-modernidade, as semelhanças na destruição de dois marcos da arquitetura moderna: o conjunto residencial Pruitt-Igoe (PI) e o World Trade Center (WTC). Argumenta que a destruição, tanto do PI como do WTC, deveu-se não apenas à questão física (no PI, uma destruição planejada pela sociedade, e no WTC, uma destruição por ela não planejada); pelo contrário, a queda de ambos os edifícios seria uma materialização do fim do pensamento modernista, do qual seriam símbolos. Contrariamente ao que foi dito a respeito do 11/09/2001, propõe que naquela hora o mundo já havia mudado e que a destruição do WTC foi apenas a representação da mudança. Seguindo essa argumentação, o artigo propõe inovações no campo do planejamento e da arquitetura, assim como novas concepções para espaços contemporâneos, a exemplo dos projetos do novo WTC.Urban planning, Architecturecei2108Urban PlanningArticlesReady for Experiment: Dwight Perkins and Progressive Architectures in Chicago, 1893-1918http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:133553
Gray, Jennifer Louisehttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:10421Wed, 18 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000Chicago's turn-of-the-century social settlements, most notably Hull House, have long been considered the mainstay of American progressive reforms. Yet settlement houses were but one aspect of a wide-ranging set of architectural and spatial inventions that used certain kinds of familiar imagery to build public support for innovative social ambitions. This dissertation connects the major settlement house designs of Chicago architect Dwight Perkins with the parks, recreation centers, playgrounds, and public schools he designed during these same years. It also situates Perkins among the extraordinary group of Chicago reformers who were transforming philanthropy, education, public health, municipal government, and the urban environment. The portrait that emerges is one where architecture and civic space were indelibly bound up with and helped to advance transformative social changes. Chicago was the epicenter of American progressive reforms. Both theoretical and practical, these extended across a broad range of issues from education to women's rights, political participation to public health, the natural environment to municipal reforms, social psychology to the social sciences. Embracing most of these aspirations, Perkins took up familiar civic typologies and gave them a new purpose that can be described, most concisely, as democratic social centers. To some extent, they could be compared with the "social condensers" of contemporary Soviet Union, architecture intended to help generate, or at least facilitate, major social and political transformation. Yet Perkins was not an ideologue. He adjusted his own beliefs to the particular, and often rather cautious, attitudes of various clients and constituencies. By and large, the tensions focused on several related issues that were inherent difficulties in the American progressive movement: a desire for bureaucratic efficiency that leaned towards restricted budgets and standardized types; a desire to transform society that contravened an abiding faith in contingent, piecemeal change; and a desire for expansive democratic participation that ran up against a deep suspicion of the immigrant populations that were flooding into American cities, especially in Chicago where foreign-born individuals or children of immigrants made of 77% of the population in 1900. While interested in intellectual debate about education, social psychology, and political reforms, Perkins was a pragmatist. He wanted the chance to create architecture that could be tested, discovering the most feasible and effective ways to bring about widespread social progress. He applied his ideals about social democracy, education, and the environment in various contexts and in different ways, always remaining open to experimentation, collaboration, and compromise. These "flexible principles," simultaneously consistent and elastic, gave him the fluidity to engage diffuse audiences, helping him advance his goals. This dissertation situates Perkins within the American progressive movement that centered on Chicago, more than any other city of the era. It then analyzes his designs for five civic typologies - settlement houses, parks, playgrounds, recreation centers, and public schools - as well as his vision for how these spaces were constituent parts of an innovative urban-planning model based on overlapping, yet distinct neighborhood centers. It explains the intellectual debates that informed these projects and his concerted efforts to implement improvements, even if they did not fulfill his highest ideals. Perkins spoke of his designs as "social centers" that he believed were able to facilitate democratic exchange across class and economic lines, as well as bring much needed public services to the people of Chicago. Dwight Perkins was a designer and community activist of mainly regional significance who believed, above all, in social democracy. Exploring his social politics allows me to situate his work within the dominant narratives of American progressivism and its corollaries in modern architecture. This is not to suggest that his progressive goals and aesthetic predilections were avant-garde. Perkins by and large eschewed radical forms in order to achieve other goals, though some involved architectural innovations and experiments. Democratic engagement was his primary concern, related to other principles about educational freedoms, public health, and environmentalism. These aspirations remain central to the history and future of self-consciously progressive architecture, whether in Europe or the United States.Architecture, Art historyjlg2006ArchitectureDissertationsWilderness Nation: Building Canada's Railway Landscapes, 1885-1929http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:131471
Lam, Elsahttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:10248Fri, 29 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000Central to Canadian identity is a national consciousness of inhabiting a country of vast landscapes, which are often identified as "wilderness." This thesis explores the Canadian Pacific Railway Company's use of architecture, landscape, and spatial techniques to construct Canadian concepts of wilderness during a crucial period of national expansion, economic growth, and cultural development. In alignment with federal projects of cultural nationalism, the country's first transcontinental railway promoted land-grant sales and tourism by representing Canadian landscapes as wilderness areas to be at turns enhanced as scenic locales, tamed by agriculture, preserved as intact environments, or assimilated into a folk heritage. The thesis is organized through a series of four case studies, each of which examines a particular architectural episode pertaining to a different variation of the wilderness ideal. The first case study, "A Civilized Wilderness" studies a tourism program initiated following the railroad's completion in 1885, in which luxury railway hotels were constructed in locations seen as exhibiting the scenic properties of the aesthetic sublime. "A Fertile Wilderness" examines the railway's ready-made farm program of 1909 to 1914, which envisioned the redemption of sprawling Prairie wilderness areas within picturesque farming communities. "A Recreational Wilderness" examines a bungalow camp program from 1919 to 1929 that promoted the forests as a haven for riding, hiking, and residing in rustic cabins. Finally, "A Primitive Wilderness" examines the C.P.R.-sponsored Banff Indian Days festival that was fully formed between 1911 and 1929, in which Natives were associated with images of untouched wilderness settings belonging to a distant past. This thesis studies how both the railway infrastructure itself and its landscapes came to be constructed as aesthetic objects, relating to landscape traditions in Europe and North America, and contributing to the conceptualization of wilderness as an integral part of cultural nationalism in Canada.Architecture, Canadian studies, Historyehl2106ArchitectureDissertationsA story in color, at Notre Dame in Paris . . .http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:130620
Tesi, Alessandrahttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:10111Thu, 31 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000ArchitectureItalian AcademyWorking papersPalladio's drawings : a self-portrait on paperhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:130366
Beltramini, Guidohttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:10027Fri, 25 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000Architecture, Art historyItalian AcademyWorking papersOn the trail of Frederick II : the rediscovery of Medieval architecture in southern Italy and 19th century European nationalismhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:130360
Cianciolo , Gabriellahttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:10025Thu, 24 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000Architecture, European historyItalian AcademyWorking papersNighttime and Daytime Blurred: Hyperreality and Kitsch in Las Vegashttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:130254
Irazabal Zurita, Clara E.http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:9985Thu, 17 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000This study investigates the production of hyperreality and kitsch in the last generation of tourist/gambling developments in Las Vegas. In these environments, the distinctions between nighttime and daytime are purposely blurred or made insignificant through their manipulation for the creation of spectacle and the production of a sense of alienation from time and reality. This suspension of real time and space is aimed at both facilitating the deceiving perception of false, constructed natures, and producing ideal sites for pleasure and consumption. I engage this exploration through two main analytical concepts: hyperreality and kitsch. Building upon this theoretical framework, I propose the term hyperkitsch to denote the phenomenon in Las Vegas, and I claim that people's fascination with hyperkitsch iconography that relates to the urban world results from their alienation from their real cities. Thus, in Las Vegas Strip, there are simulated urban landscapes upon where visitors enact fantasy lives and ease the emptiness and estrangement derived from conflicted urban identities and poor citizenship. The study is a contribution for understanding the current social crisis of urban identity formation—for both the human subject and the public sphere—amid the accelerating metamorphos of our contemporary culture of spectacle, hedonism and consumerism.Architecture, Urban planningcei2108Urban PlanningArticlesKitsch Is Dead, Long Live Kitsch: The Production of Hyperkitsch in Las Vegashttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:130248
Irazabal Zurita, Clara E.http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:9984Thu, 17 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000This study investigates the production of hyperreality and kitsch in the latest generation of hotel-casino developments in Las Vegas. In these environments, visual imagery is manipulated for the creation of spectacle and a sense of alienation from time and reality. This suspension of real time and space is aimed at both facilitating the production of a simulated environment as "natural" and producing ideal sites for pleasure and consumption. Building upon the concepts of hyperreality and kitsch, this study proposes the framework of hyperkitsch to understand Las Vegas's contribution to contemporary urbanization. Through four case studies, this paper suggests that the iconographies of hyperkitsch allow visitors to enact fantasy lives that ease the estrangement that is the result of conflicted urban identities and impoverished citizenship in today's alienating cities. The first two are Rome and New York at Caesar's Palace and the New York-New York Hotel/Casinos respectively, which established the new prototype of the hotel-casino complex. The latter two case studies are the urban microcosms of the Venetian and Aladdin, which among the newer hotels feature the perfected "naturalized" cityscape ever more prominently. Breaking ranks with popular dismissive critiques of the Las Vegas prototype, this study argues that if hyperkitsch is here to stay, we need to explore its pedagogical, liberating, and redemptive potential. At a time when meaningful urban citizenship struggles to find footing in a culture increasingly defined by spectacle, hedonism, and consumerism, the hope for this study is to suggest a way out of the impasse imposed by the crises of social urban identity formation.Architecture, Urban planningcei2108Urban PlanningArticlesNew Urbanism as a New Modernist Movement: A Comparative Look at Modernism and New Urbanismhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:129169
Vanderbeek, Michael; Irazabal Zurita, Clara E.http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:9702Wed, 24 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000This article situates New Urbanism, and neotraditionalism more generally, on the ideological continuum of Modernism â€” as a neo-Modernist movement. By comparing the social and environmental goals of Modernism and New Urbanism as laid out in their respective charters and questioning the ability of New Urbanism to achieve its goals where Modernism failed, it offers a contextual analysis of the motivations behind the movements and their implications in practice. It then presents the cities of Brasilia, in Brazil, and Celebration, in the United States, as examples of the difficulty of putting the altruistic rhetoric of Modernism and New Urbanism, respectively, into practice. Finally, it offers the lessons of history as a way to reflect on the challenges facing New Urbanism and its prospects for success.Urban planning, Architecturecei2108Urban PlanningArticles